£ 2.50
■^ios that Dripped Blood US$5.25
AUG the Films the Facts th
771355 " 913000 '
Exploring the worlds of the master orFt^or
every month with classic comic strips, features, interviev
Editor
Marcus Hearn
Designed by
Peri Godbold
and Gary Gilbert
Assistant Editor
Alan Barnes
Magazine Group
Gary Gillatt
Scott Gray
Philip MacDonald
Group Editor
Gary Russell
Production
lulie Pickering
Mark Irvine
Andrew Parslow
Marketing & Promotions
Yvonne Taylor
Chris McCormack
Advertising
Gemini Media Sates Ltd
( 01277 ) 355418
Art Director
Helen Nally
Editorial Director
Paul Neary
Hnancial Director
Caroline Aubrey
Managing Director
Richard Maskell
Chairman
lint Gallon
for Hammer Film Productions
Graham Skeggs
Thanks to
Freddie Francis
limmy Sangster
Ian Scoones
Fred Humphreys
Barbara Ewing
lens Reinheimer
Stephen loncs
Max Dccharne
The Tony Hillman Collection
lohn Herron
Charlie Baker
Richard Klemensen
Gary Wilson
The British Film Institute
Adrian Kigeisford
and
Peter Noble
■'I
tile filiff Ihc Fads Ihi l^iSiudias iSol Dnppcil Slond
- ' \ y.
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he vampire Count visits us once again, as we
iook at two of Hammer’s finest reworkings of
Bram Stoker: Dracula Has Risen From the Grave
(on page 21) and Tasle the Blood of Dracula {on
page 39).
The legend endures elsewhere as well. The first
World Dracula Congress recently convened in
Transylvania; scholars, fans and wannabes from
such disparate locales as Tdkyo and Massachusetts
gathered to ponder all things bloodthirsty and
purchase such souvenirs as 'Dracula vodka’ and
‘Undcad postcards’.
Although Castle Dracula may seem the ideal
location for such an event. Stokerphiles would
doubtless testify that Whitby or London would have
done just as well. At least the locals there would have
some inkling of what was going on - the first
Romanian translation of Dracula, and the first film
based upon it, reached the country a mere three years
ago. Many Romanians are apparently still none the
wiser, When the impaler you knew as Vlad Tepes
turns up 500 years later looking like Christopher Lee
in a tuxedo, some confusion is perhaps forgivable.
Further Westernisation of the Christian prince’s
exploits is inevitable: the centenary oj Stoker’s novel
is to be celebrated in Los Angeles. The mind boggles
at what 'Dracula 97’ will offer, but even the most
tasteless film-maker’s excesses are sure to seem
inoffensive in comparison.
This issue is, sadly, our last at this cover price.
Rising production costs have necessitated a small
increase from next month onwards. All those taking
out a subscription with us now, however, will receive a
year’s worth of issues for significantly less than those
buying the magazine elsewhere. We've got some great
material lined up, including interviews with Peter
Cushing and Christopher Lee, and we’d like to have
you on board.
Marcus Hearn
Editor
I
Tales From The Crypt
All that’s happening in the
Hammer world.
Satanic Writes
Your letters.
Tales From The Script -
the Freddie Francis interview
“Horror films happened to be
the best way to continue
directing; they were just films
as far as I was concerned. ”
The Vampire’s Lover*-
the Barbara Ewing4fhfaiyiew
“Whatever you’re acting In,
you have to believe in it every
second. And in the Dracula
picture there was never a
flicker of sending it up."
Clerical Duties -
the Ewan Hooper int^Gview
“People still remember me in
Dracula Has Risen From the
Grave, especially after it’s just
been on television and it's still
fresh in their memory.”
Royal Blood
The full story of Hammer and
the Queen's Award to Industry.
Dracula Has Risen From the
Grave
Cast and Credits
The Character^' ^
The Story
In Production
The Script
Casting
Shooting
On Release
Comment
Critique
Classic Scene
British Horror Classics -
Corruption
Peter Cushing’s forgotten
classic comes under the
spotlight, with memories
from stars Sue Lloyd and
David Lodge.
Tapes from the Tomb
The verdict on the latest rental
and sell-through releases.
Terror Vision Competition
A clutch of horror videos up
for grabs.
Who Were Hammer?
The last part of this series
examines the career of one of
Hammer’s most celebrated
directors, Terence Fisher.
Next Month in Hammer Horror
Coming attractions.
For subscription details
see page 33.
Whitstable Hosts Cushing
Celebration .
P eter Cushing’s long association with Whitstable is being
commemorated with a special exhibition at the town's
museum this summer. ^
The exhibition will bring together a fascinating collection
of material marking his film career, spanning his first trip to
Hollywood in 1939, his years as a British television star, the
Hammer era, and beyond. It will include personal items loaned
by close friends, some of his paintings, and memorabilia
collected by long-standing fans.
Fifty years have passed since Cushing made his first known
visit to Whitstable with his wife, Helen. In 1959, they bought a
house on the sea front. Cushing spent his last years in the town,
and was a much-loved local figure, often seen out and about on
his bicycle or in the Thdor Tea Rooms in Harbour Street.
Comments Ken Reedie. Curator of Museums: “Peter Cushing
donated a bench to the town in 1992, and the inscription upon
it reads, ‘Presented by Helen and Peter Cushing who love
Whitstable and its people so very much.' Local people returned
his affection, and so the exhibition will be a delight to so many
in the town. It will also be of interest to summer
visitors, and we expect a number will make a
t trip especially to see this show. We also hope to
have something permanently in the museum
about Peter.”
'Peter Cushing - A Celebration' will be at the
Whitstable Museum and Gallery, 5a Oxford
Street, Whitstable, Kent, between 22nd July and
16th September inclusive, except for
Wednesdays and Sundays. Opening hours are
10.30 am to 1.00, then 2.00 to 4.00 pm.
Admission is free. For further information, please contact the
Museum on (01227) 276998.
Terror Vision
H:
W arner Home Video have announced a provisional
schedule of nine Hammer films to be released over the
next four months, all part of their new Terror Vision range.
17th July sees the release of the two Christopher Lee classics,
Taste the Blood of Dracula (the cut version, sadly) and To the
Devil ... a Daughter. On 14th August, Dracula Has Risen From
the Grave and The Satanic Rites of Dracula will be reissued, this
time with their original theatrical trailers in situ. Likewise
Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, re-released on 18th September
alongside Dr Jekyll & Sister Hyde and, on sell-through for the
first time ever in the UK, The Curse of the Werewolf. (It’s not yet
been confirmed by Warners whether or not this will be the
fully-restored print, as screened on BBCl last summer; rest
assured, Hammer Horror readers will be the first to know.) And
finally, on 30th October, the eagerly-anticipated The Brides of
Dracula sees light of day, with The Legend of the 7 Golden
Vampires released in tandem.
Christopher Lee
[ ot on the heels of
A Feast at Midnight,
a globetrotting
Christopher Lee looks set
to maintain his current
high profile with a number
of new projects. He
recently completed work on
a television series of Edgar
Allan Poe adaptations
entitled Tales of Mystery
and Imagination. In
addition to being the
on-screen narrator of each
instalment, Lee also
appears as Prince Prospero
in The Masque of the Red
Death, a story last filmed
by Roger Corman in 1964.
The series was shot in
South Africa.
More recently. Christopher has been in Morocco filming a US
mini-series, Moses, alongside Ben Kingsley and Frank Llgella.
Until the end of July, the tireless Mr Lee will be in Toronto
working on The Stupids, a feature film starring Tom Arnold and
directed by John American Werewolf in London Landis.
Ripper Stalks Watford
M uch-loved Hammer character actor Michael Ripper will be
making a rare public appearance (subject to commitments)
on Sunday 30th July at Watford’s Movie Mart and
Collectors’ Fair. He’ll be signing copies of a recently-launched
^ •
Vincent Price in flower Carman's 1964 version of
The Masque of the Red Death.
4 HAMMER HORROR
one-off tribute magazine
entitled Unsung Hero - Michael
Ripper. Also appearing will be
Countess Dracula herself.
Ingrid Pitt. The event, which
runs between 1 1 .00 am and
4.00 pm, is at Watford Leisure
Centre, Horseshoe Lane,
Garston, Watford, Herts. For
further information, telephone
Paul Brown of event
organisers, Midnight Media,
on (01487) 832480. Details of
how to order the magazine
direct will be in next month’s
Hammer Horror.
UMSUMG HERO
Francis at Fantasm 95
A cclaimed genre director Freddie Francis will be the subject of a
Guard/on interview as part of the National Film Theatre's annual
Fantasm weekend in July. Francis will be appearing on Sunday
16th July at 6.30; the interview will be preceded at 4.15 by a screening
of the rarely-seen 1961 chiller The Innocents, on which Francis served
as director of photography. Some tickets may still be available: call the
NFTl box office on 0171 928 3232 to confirm. Also screened over the
weekend of 14th to 16th July will be exclusive previews of Clive
Barker’s latest. Lord of //fusions, Candyman 2: Farewell to the Flesh, and
Dr Jekyll and Ms Hyde, a new re-working of the Robert Louis Stevenson
classic starring Sean Young.
Corman and Sharp at
Festival of Fantastic Films
S chlock auteur Roger Corman and Hammer director Don Sharp
are confirmed to attend this year’s sixth annual Festival of
Fantastic Films, to be held in Manchester over the weekend of
22nd to 24th September. The Festival will also feature exclusive
screenings of new movies, over 30 archive showings covering nine
decades of science- fantasy and horror, a filmfair, an auction, the
amateur video contest and a rolling 24 hour video programme.
For booking and accommodation details, write to Tony Edwards at 95
Meadowgate Road, Salford, Manchester, M6 8EN, enclosing a stamped
addressed envelope.
Ofituary
C haracter actor John Phillips, best
known to Hammer fans for his
portrayal of the scheming Sir Stanley
Preston in 1967’s The Mummy's Shroud.
died on Thursday 1 1th May. He was 80
years old. Born in Birmingham, John
Phillips first trod the boards at the
Birmingham Rep in 1935. His early
career, however, was interrupted by the
outbreak of war; Phillips would be
awarded the Military Cross during his
time of service. A distinguished stage
career - his Brutus to Sir Michael
Hordern’s Cassius in Julius Caesar at the
Old Vic was highly-regarded - would be peppered with occasional film
and television appearances. He played General Leighton in 1960's
Village of the Damned, and Storm in 1967’s Torture Garden; on
television, he performed in series such as The Onedin Line and Z-Cars.
Phillips later retired to Wales. +
e had a huge response to Issue 2’s major
swag-grab; nearly all the entrants answered
the two questions we set correctly. Firstly,
Peter Cushing originally played Professor Fuchs in
Blood From the Mummy's Tomb, only to later be
replaced by Andrew Keir; and secondly, the film
other than The Horror of Frankenstein in which
Dave Prowse played
Frankenstein and the
Monster From Hell.
The first prize. ^
comprising a 12" vinyl '
kit of the werewolf J
from The Curse of the ^ ^ f ~
Wereivo//'. five videos
(Quatermass and the .
/’it signed by Andrew ^
Keir. The Horror of m
Frankenstein signed L 1
by Dave
From the
Mummy's Tomb signed HB
by lames Villiers, the
widescreen Dracula ^^B M
Prince of Darkness ^^B B
and The Mummy's .^^B B
Shroud), plus a year’s ^^B^
free subscription to
Hammer Horror, goes
to Deepak | Arora of ^
Acton. West London.
As an unexpected bonus, Hammer House of Horror
Marketing donated a fully assembled and painted
model kit as first prize. The second prize of all five
videos goes to AK Tart of Edinburgh, and the third
prize of the three autographed videos goes to Jason
Parkes of Dudley. West Midlands.
•RluWEDEVEKfMmnr
Ijlll&Cl
n Issue 2. we also asked you
for the name of the character
Christopher Lee played in
Funny Man. The answer was,
of course, Callum Chance.
Funny Man videos went to
our three lucky winners:
Mrs M Fisk of Enfield,
Middlesex; Graeme Tennant
of Edinburgh; and Nina Walsh
of Rotherham, South Yorkshire.
ItAMMtlli nOUROli 5
S end your letters to:
Satanic Writes,
Hammer Horror,
Marvel Comics Ltd.,
Arundel House,
13/15 Arundel Street,
London WC2R 3DX.
Letters may be edited for reasons
of space and clarity. Full addresses
will only be printed If specially
requested.
Being a fan of Hammer films for many years, it's
always exciting to discover new information about the
studios that dripped blood. Two years ago. I had the
opporunity to organise a Hammer festival in Nancy,
north-east France. Presenttfd were more than 30
original posters, scripts loaned by the British Film
Institute, and stills. We projected 19 Hammer classics
such as Le Monstre (The Quatermass Xperimenf], Le
Cauchmar de Dracula [Dracufa], and L’lnvosion des
Morts-Vivants [The Plague of the Zombies].
Of course, to present a true tribute we needed
guests. I contacted James Bernard, jimmy Sangster
and Freddie Francis, all of whom
accepted my invitation.
I still remember them as if it was
just one day ago, Their good humour
and unpretentiousness was, to me.
extremely moving. We also had
letters from Christopher Lee, Val
Guest, Peter Cushing, and Anthony
Hinds.
Romain Kermant,
Dieve sur Meuse,
France
We’d be delighted to hear from other
international readers who have
anything unusual or interesting to
tell us about the presentation and
availability of Hammer films overseas.
The two-part Flesh and Blood
docuriJentary on Hammer referred to
a film about the Loch Ness Monster.
I believe it was made in the early
1970s. However, I can find no
reference to this film in either your
magazine or Creation Books’ The House of Horror.
Do you have any information? Has the film ever been
on television or released on video?
Neil Smithies,
Chorley,
Lancashire
Sadly, no. Nessie - the film to which you refer - was
never made. First announced for production in 1976 as
a co-production between Hammer Films, David Frost's
Paradine Films, and Japan’s Toho Productions, the film
would have followed the eponymous monster's voyage
across the world’s oceans after its escape from
Scotland’s Loch Ness. Backer Frost apparently declared
that Nessie “would make Jaws looh like a toothpaste
commercial"! Despite attracting considerable interest
at the Cannes Film Festival, the relative box-office
failure ofDino De Laurentiis’s King Kong remake
would deter crucial investors, and the plans would be
shelved. Nevertheless, Toho Productions ore believed to
have made a $500,000 working model of the monster
and to have shot certain effects sequences.
As a dedicated fan of that gentle man of horror, Peter
Cushing, I was very pleased with your coverage of his
career and memorial service.
I am a director and actor for an amateur theatre
company in Tyidesley, Manchester. We dedicated our
last production to Peter’s memory. Although Duncan
Greenwood’s Cat Among the Pigeons has nothing to
do with horror, I don’t think it mattered. After all,
Peter had more than one string to his bow.
This was not his only connection to Tyidesley
Little Theatre. In 1990, we presented a Sherlock
Holmes play. We contacted Peter and he graciously
sent us a raffle prize for the event. It was a book of
his drawings, sketched at that tea-shop. The book
was signed and contained a brief message from the
good man himself.
There are a lot of popular facts printed about
Peter. I would like to see the above details in print,
if only to underline Peter’s kindness to the small,
unknown performers - just as much as to anyone
else.
Ian Taylor,
BoHon,
Greater Manchester
fans of Peter Cusbing will be delighted to hear of a
new fanzine celebrating bis life and films. The Cushing
Courier is a miscellany of trivia concerning the man
himself. For further information, write to editor Brian
Holland at la Hulme Hall Road, Cheadle Hulme,
Stockport, Cheshire, SK8 6JT.
Could you possibly print a filmography of Hammer
movies in chronological order, as I have been
collecting the movies over a number of years and this
would be a very great help to me.
Craig Adams,
CroftfooL
Qa^
No sooner said than done, Craig. The Complete
Hammer Filmography commences in next month’s
Hammer Horror, on sale 10th August.
Thanks for producing such an informative and
interesting magazine - it certainly fills a gap in the
history of the British film industry. My own memories
of Hammer go back to the summer of 1958 when
the company released their inspired treatment of ■
O HAMMili HOliltOlt
Good news for fans of the incomparabk
Mr Ripper. See pages 4-5 .. .
1 thought that I had read every last scrap
of obscure Hammer facts, you've gone
and unearthed a whole wealth of new
information. Any chance of a similar
magazine devoted to the Universal
horrors?
I'm researching Bela Lugosi’s
English films, and would be very
interested to hear from any Hammer
Horror readers who saw or met Lugosi
during his ill-fated 1951 English tour of
Dracula, or from anyone with any
interesting information on his three
English films (Mystery of the Mary
Celeste, Dark Eyes of London, and
Mother Riley Meets the Vampire). Any
help you can give will be gratefully
received.
Andi Brooks,
15 Park Street,
Bath,
Avon,
BAITTE
Bela Lugosi's well-beralded arrival at
Southampton Docks on Tuesday lOth
April I95J was comprehensively covered
by the British press: he posed for
photographs as he disembarked the liner
Mauretania. His regional lour of Dracula,
however, wos a disaster - and it's even
been suggested that he was forced to star
in John Gif//ng's Mother Riley Meets the
Vampire simply to raise the money for his
passage home! The Mother Riley picture
will be covered towords the end of the
year in the first monthly issue of our
sister magazine, Bizarre.
'pRAOTLA' ULL Taiff
April loth lasi pfp
■OSAOUIA ' «i,i,
oci-or - SAla
In Britain “ arrives
lOtt. 1051 Pil?as9a^(,^
Dracula. 1 vividly remember the effect
that it had on me. I was sitting my GCE
'O’ levels, and had only taken my
History and English Language papers
before I saw the film. Needless to say,
those were the only two exams I passed;
I failed every single subject after having
seen Messrs Cushing and Lee. I think
that my nerves remained shattered for
a long time.
In later years, I worked for the BBC
as a dubbing mixer at Ealing Studios.
One day in 1987, 1 was booked to
work on a documentary programme,
Hammer - The Studio That Dripped
Blood. We spent a pleasant morning
recording Charles Gray’s narration.
When we came to an excerpt from his
own performance in The Devil Rides
Out, he recorded an extra line of
narration - "That’s me in the long red
cloak!" - but it was later cut. Whilst on
the subject of the film, I wonder if
anyone knows why all of Leon Greene’s
dialogue as Rex has been totally
replaced by Patrick Allen?
Michael Norwood,
Camberley,
Surrey
According to Christopher Lee, Leon Greene
was dubbed because a less distinct
accent was deemed necessary during
post-production.
I was going to write to you sooner, but
decided to wait for a few more issues to
give you a chance. No chances left now.
In my humble opinion, one of the finest
actors Hammer ever had was Michael
Ripper - and there’s only been a passing
mention of him in the mag so far. Please,
oh please would you do a profile on this
man? Can't you just see him wiping the
bar tables and telling you not to go up
near that castle tonight?
Robert Brophy,
St Anne's,
Dublin
Firstly, 1 must say what an excellent
magazine Hammer Horror is, just when
publisher of
long-running US
fanzine Little
Shoppe of Horrors,
picks ten of the
best from the
Richard Klemensen pictured with
llefti actress Judy Geeson, sfar of
Fear in tiie Night, and (rightl actress
Terence O'Connor, wife of Dracula
* ■ AD 1972 's Christopher Neame.
The perfect Hammer Gothic horror.
Cushing is superb, and the two Indies - Martita Hunt
and Freda lackson - are equally fabulous. What a gorgeous
movie.
2 .
A true battle between good and evil, as embodied in
Christopher Lee and Charles Gray respectively. The climax
still gives me goosebumps.
3.
Hammer's thought-provoking version of the Nigel Kneale
television serial. Great when it first came out in 1968;
even better today.
4.
The real groundbreaker for Hammer: light years beyond
T/ic Curse of Frankenstein. Lee and Cushing battle for the
soul of Melissa Stribling. Saw it in a big cinema in
Baltimore last year. Veronica Carlson, sitting nearby,
jumped out of her chair several times. It still works.
5.
The extremes of acting brilliance, from the kind-hearted
(sort of) doctor of fraiifccn.slt’/n Created Woman to the
heartless demon of Frankenstefii Musi Be Destroyed.
Peter Cu.shing. the best actor ever in a horror role.
7.
I don’t care what other critics say; this puts anything
Universal did in the thirties and forties to .shame. The most
beautiful film ever made by Hammer; lack Asher painted
with light.
8 .
The Hammer film that made me a horror fan again, back
in 1969, just before I was drafted into the army of the
Vietnam era. Colourful and well done. Lee dies superbly
on the cross.
9.
Hammer's action films are often given short notice.
An incredible cast, and great storytelling. Michael Ripper
at his best, and Cushing beats up Milton Reid!
10.
Finally available in an uncut version Stateside. Inspired
film-making; cruel thoughts on a post-holocaust world.
Still powerful today.
HAMMF.Ii HOIIROR 7
O ne might think that a directorial CV which includes chillers such as The
Evil of Frankenstein, Dr Terror's House of Horrors, The Skull, Dracula Has
Risen From the Grave and Tales From the Crypt would be indicative of a
keen interest in the horror genre. But as far as Freddie Francis is concerned,
his tenure as one of the top masters of the macabre was pure happenstance.
“I don’t like the genre, but I like the medium," he admits. “Horror’s just
something that doesn’t interest me - 1 would love to direg: comedies. Horror
films happened to be the best way to continue directing;
they were just films as far as I was concerned.”
Francis first achieved notoriety as a cinematographer
back in the 1950s, when he worked with such esteemed
directors as John Huston, Joseph Losey and jack
Clayton on pictures like Moby Dick (1956) and Room at
the Top (1958). In September 1959, he got a foretaste of
his future when he answered a request from producer
Anthony Hinds to photograph Never Take Sweets From a
Stranger, a gripping tale of child molestation that was one of Hammer's
best - and most controversial - films. "I was surprised that they asked me to
do it and at the freedom they gave me,” Francis remembers. “Because of that,
I became very friendly with Tony Hinds. I would have loved Hammer to
continue making those films, but they didn’t want to get involved in anything
there could be any discussion about.”
Later in 1959, Francis got back to more ’respectable’ surroundings and
shot the film for which he would win his first Oscar: Sons and Lovers, based
on the DH Lawrence novel. He quickly moved on in February 1960 to shoot
Karel Reisz’s Soturday Night and Sunday Morning. Exactly one year later,
Francis was reunited with Jack Clayton for The Innocents, an adaptation of
Henry James’s The Turn of The Screw. Undoubtedly one of the most eerie and
atmospheric ghost stories ever filmed. The Innocents stands as a triumph of
style and mood, due in no small part to the intricate photography of Freddie
Francis. Although shot in Cinemascope, the film has the look and feel of a
small intimate picture, and perhaps no other film has
used the widescreen format more effectively. It’s ironic
that the film was not originally planned as a Scope
picture. “A matter of weeks before Jack and I shot it.
20th Century Fox said it had to be done that way,"
Francis says. “Jack was very worried, so we sat down
and decided how we were going to approach it. The
main design was in the lighting. I had a special front
made up for the camera, with some filters that you
could bring in and out of the sides so that you never really knew what was
happening on the edges of the frame. The picture needed to be a small
intimate film, even in Scope. Although the lighting seems low key, we actually
shot in a very high key because of the Scope focus restrictions. We really did
use an enormous amount of light, which was unheard of in those days, to get
the effects we wanted. I still think it was the only movie ever really designed
for Cinemascope.”
The year between Saturday Night and Innocents had provided Francis with
would have loved
Hammer to continue
makins those films,
but they didn’t want
to sot Involved in
anything there could
be any discussion
about.”
>i£)ove.' Freddie Francis on location for Tyburn's Legend of Uie Werewolf in 1975.
8 HAMMER HORROR
his first opportunity to direct: the Bryanston
comedy Two and Two Mofee Six. Although his career
as a cinematographer was already in high gear,
Francis had loftier ambitions. He was no longer
content to sit behind the camera - he now wanted
to sit in the director's chair. “To live well as a
cinematographer in England in those days, you had
to work all the time. Consequently, you were often
on films you weren't very keen about, working for a
director you didn't admire. So 1 thought 1 might as
well direct films myself. I kept directing so people
would think of me as a director as opposed to an
ordinary cinematographer.” Francis would, however,
find that bolstering his directorial credits would not
always place him at the top of the bill. Such was
the case when he was called upon to rescue an
adaptation of John Wyndham's 1951 book, The Day
of the Triffids. In August of 1961, filming began in
Spain under the direction of Steve Sekely from a
script by executive producer Philip Yordan. The
next month, filming moved to the south coast and
Shepperton Studios, before wrapping in October.
The film was screened at year’s end to executives
from Rank, who were partners in the picture and
planned to give it UK distribution - that is, until
they saw Sekely's cut. Francis elaborates: "Rank
had a pick-up deal and when they saw the film,
they didn't want to pick it up. It was bloody awful,
the producer [George Pitcher! itied to do it for
nothing. Allied Artists were involved and they had a
troubleshooter who came over and thought it was
terrible. He persuaded Philip Yordan to come and
take a look at it. After the screening, Yordan said,
'It's a horror film and it's horrible.’ To get Rank to
fulfil their contract, Bernard Gordon wrote the
subplot in the lighthouse, and I was brought in to
shoot those scenes. Plus there were' better-looking .
shots of Triffids, which, thanks to Ispeclal effects
man! Tommy Howard, looked slightly more
interesting than Spanish peasants dressed in sacks.
We shot at MGM British Studios for five weeks.
As a result, they were able to get Rank to pick up
the film. It was agreed that I wouldn’t have a
credit - in those days 1 wasn't in a strong enough
position to demand one, plus we didn't realise my
part of the film would be as big as it was." After
directing The Brain (aka Vengeonce - a version of
Curt Siodmak's Donovan's Brain) in the spring of
1962, Francis was reunited that July with Anthony
Hinds for Paranoiac, the first of three
psychological thrillers for Hammer. However,
it was his new reputation as a viable
director that landed him the job, not his
friendship with Hinds: in Francis's words,
"Hammer never took any mad chances."
Indeed, according to Francis, Hinds’s
approach to film-making was very different
from his own. "I don't believe Tony liked
Aims. He liked the business side of
organising them, but he didn't like getting
Involved in anything like the shooting. He
would very rarely come on the floor; it was
more like, ‘Here's the script, get on with it.'"
The Paranoiac script Francis got on with
was penned by [imrny Sangster, who also
wrote the other two thrillers Francis directed
for Hammer, Nightmore (1963) and Hysteria
(1964). Over the
course of the trilogy,
Francis came to have
a guarded admiration
for Sangster’s writing.
“I thought that, provided you didn’t take them too
literally, Jimmy's ideas were great; outrageous but
great." As for developing a unique approach to filming
the suspense and deception Sangster’s scripts contained,
Francis is speculative. “I must've developed a rhythm.
Each one was an extension of what I’d done before - if
something worked and the audience gasped at a certain
point, then I’d work on that. There's obviously some
knack I have, though- Martin Scorsese said about me,
‘Freddie knows so much about the genre. He’s the one
guy who can do the shot of a young lady walking down
a dark corridor at night and you just know she
should’ve stayed home in bed.'"
In 1963. Francis took his first stab at directing a
Gothic horror film for Hammer in The Evil of
franfeenstein. But before shooting began, Francis let it
be known that he wanted the obligatory creation scenes
to be really striking. “I said to Tony, ‘Look, I’ll do this,
but you've got to spend an awful lot of money and have
a really good laboratory set.' 1 just wanted a really good
laboratory.”
With four Hammer notches in his director’s belt,
Francis was ready to move on. The opportunity arose
HAMMER HORROR 9
Aijove; One of Frank Humphries' ohiinel design sketches of the
laPoratory from The Evil of Frankenstein.
The end result, while perhaps not as amfiitious, was
nevertheless impressive.
when a relatively new company by the
name of Amicus came calling. Under the
guidance of Max Rosenberg and Milton
Subotsky, Amicus was ready to go
head-to-head with Hammer in the horror
sweepstakes, and. to add insult to injury,
hired out Hammer personnel, not to men-
tion its two stars, Peter Cushing and
Christopher Lee. Rosenberg and Subotsky
chose Francis to direct their first major
horror venture, and in May 1964, filming
began on Dr Terror's House of Horrors,
fl Dead of N/ghf-inspired anthology that
Francis found a welcome change.
“I enjoyed working in the portmanteau
format,” he says, “mainly because 1 was
bored with the Hammer films. 1 thought it
was a sort of tease film, and I like any film
where you can tease the audience."
With Milton Subotsky. Francis found
a camaraderie he’d been missing with
Anthony Hinds - "Hammer was a
commercial venture; in contrast, Subotsky
was a film fan," he asserts. Talking shop
made for a nice change of pace, but
Francis quickly learned that working for
Amicus was to have its own set of
drawbacks. "Amicus would always accept
less money than budgeted to make their
films. To make up the difference. Milton
would write the scripts and he wasn’t a
very good writer. I actually had scripts
from Milton that timed at 40 minutes,
which meant we had to pad them and
rewrite on the floor," A good case in point
was The Sfeuf/, based on Robert Bloch’s
story The Skull of the Marquis De Sade,
which Francis began directing early in
1965, "On the first day of shooting. Max
Rosenberg came on the floor and said,
’Paramount wants it for a two-hour TV
slot, so we have to shoot 90 minutes.'
So having put 35 minutes in it, I had to
put in another 15. Milton insisted on doing
the editing, but unfortunately he was no
more an editor than a writer. So one had
these terrible fights - but I had to admire
Milton because he loved the cinema
and he got films made. I’m sure Milton
never made any money because by the
time the films were finished, there was
nothing left for him."
The work of Robert Bloch would
figure in Francis’s Amicus schedule
twice more in 1965. Bloch was the
screenwriter for The Psychopath and
also for The Deadly Bees, an adaptation
of HF Heard’s novel A Teste of Honey.
Despite the late Bloch's stellar
reputation as one of the main architects
of 20th century horror, Francis was
wholly unimpressed with his screen-
writing talents. "1 didn’t think much
of Bloch’s scripts at all,” he states.
“His reputation was sort of overblown
because of Psycho, but his scripts were
no different from the other hack writers
I seemed to get," The experience
Francis had with Bloch’s Deadly Bees
screenplay only reinforced that opinion.
“There was very little of Bloch’s stuff
left in Deadly Bees, which was an awful
nightmare. I thought his script was
terrible and refused to do it, so it was
rewritten by Tony Marriott. We were in
a mess because they’d already built the
(beekeeper’s) farmhouse set and we had
to make sure we could still use it.
It was the only time in my life when I
thought I’d stop making movies."
Autumn 1966 brought two more
Amicus films to Francis’s doorstep - a
science-fiction tale entitled They Come
from Beyond Space and another Bloch
anthology. Torture Garden. In the case
of the former, it was shot back-jo-back
with another Amicus sci-fi film, The
Terrornauls. According to Francis, “they
used up most of the money on The
Terrornauls, so we had no money to
spend to give They Come From Beyond*
Space any style. It was pretty awful.”
Torture Garden was a decidedly more
Above: Jimmy Sangster (left) and a muffled Freddie Francis outside a freezing Bray Studios during production ot Nightmare around Christmas 1962.
lO HAMMER HORROR
Uxive: Freddie Francis (centre) directs Don Borisenko
and Judy HMable in a scene from TTie Psycfiopatd.
men tft/s St/'/ IV3S printed in the September 16th
edition of Kine Weekly in J96S, the fi'm was in
production under its working titie Schizo.
fiijgnt; Nature rebels in The Deadiy Bees (1966).
enjoyable experience, as Francis was
able to work with a cast that
included Burgess Meredith and lack
Palance. His handling of the final
episode, The Man Who Collected
Poe, was so impressive that it left its
mark on a budding American
film-maker, who would confess this
to Francis nearly 25 years later.
"When 1 was doing Cape Pear with
Martin Scorsese,” he relates, "I told
him that I’d been sent a script about
the life of Edgar Allan Poe and I didn't want to do it. He told me, ‘I think you
ought to do it. You direct it and I'll produce It. You're the only one who’s
done anything good about Poe.' I said, ‘I didn’t do anything about Poe,’ and
he answered, ‘Yes you did!’ and spoke about The Man Who Collected Poe . .
Scorsese may have been enthralled by what he was watching in the late
1960s, but Francis was far from being enthralled about what he himself was
making. By 1968. he had directed 12 horror and science-fiction films and his
early philosophy - quantity rather than quality - was coming back to haunt
him. He was now eager to lose the stigma of being strictly a horror director,
but he was to find that it was too late -- the die had already been cast. “I was
trapped because if you turn out a product that makes money in this business,
they just want you to keep doing it. There were many other things that I
wanted to do; jane Gaskell wrote a comedic drama called AH Neat in Black
Stockings, and [in 1968j my friend Leon Clore was producing it as a film and
wanted me to direct. It was partly financed by Associated British, and Nat
Cohen said, 'If you want Freddie to direct horror films I’ll give you money,
but I don’t want him to direct this.’ It seemed extremely
stupid - 1 didn’t like horror films and didn’t want to keep
making them. By this time, 1 was a cult figure with horror
fans and was going all over the world to festivals. I didn't
like the sort of people I met. I would talk to them about
Billy Wilder and William Wyler, but they didn’t know
what I was talking about. So I’d talk about the Tod
Brownings and so forth, but they still didn't know. I
realised they were interested in horror, but not necessarily
films. And that’s when I decided I really wanted to get
out.”
He may have wanted to leave horror behind, but with
few other directing opportunities, Francis had to console
himself with an abrupt final return to the Hammer stable.
An emergency phone call from Anthony Hinds asked him
to substitute for an injured Terence Fisher in the latest
episode for Christopher Lee’s alter ego, Dracufa Has Pisen
From the Grave, With no better alternative, Francis agreed
and the film went into production in April 1968 - the
same month as A/f Neat in Black Stockings, ironically.
Francis was paired with producer Aida Young, who had
never before produced a Gothic horror film and had been
called upon to sub for Anthony Nelson Keys. Given her
tfte infamous
staking scene from
Dracula Has Risen
From the Grave,
Francis's last
Hammer picture.
relative inexperience. Young acquitted herself admirably, although Francis
claims that her role was really that of intermediary. "One really worked for
Tony: she happened to be there but she was a sort of go-between and had no
real say, We certainly worked together, but
under Tony’s instructions.”
Francis’s unusual use of coloured
filters throughout the film undoubtedly
makes a major impression upon it, and
it’s surprising to learn that this technique
was more or less an afterthought, done at
cameraman Arthur Grant’s instigation.
“Arthur used to get slightly ambitious when he worked with me," says
Francis, "and he was always talking about the filters I’d used in The
Jrrnocents. So we decided to dig them out and use them on this picture.’’
In addition to his affinity with Arthur Grant, Francis found a kindred spirit
in Christopher Lee, with whom he had worked on Dr Terror’s and The Sfeuif.
Both men were growing restless in the genre and searching for greener
pastures, and, as Francis confirms, Lee’s disenchantment echoed his own.
“Chris always used to say that he
wished he could stop doing these
things, and by that time, I wished
I could stop doing them as well.
So I would listen to him with a
certain amount of sympathy.
I think at this time he was also
battling with Hammer for more
money. But he’s a professional -
these things never affected his
performance.”
Unfortunately, the lack of
fulfilment Francis felt was not
helped by head office interference
with Dracufa. "1 shot the film
and then went on holiday," he
remembers. “By the time I got
back, the film had been edited,
and I was a bit angry because
Hammer hadn’t understood the
romance between Paul and Maria and had taken much of it out. But that was
Tony and Jim Needs, the editor. I’m sure. Alda had nothing to do with that."
Francis himself had nothing more to do with Hammer after the Drocufa,
primarily due to the departure in 1969 of Anthony Hinds, who had been
Francis’s sole contact at Hammer House. “I never worked with any of the
other people there," he says. “So once Tony left, the Hammer connection
was gone.”
Jumping from the frying pan into the fire, Francis assumed the director’s
seat in July 1969 on T>og. Produced by long-time schlock-meister Herman
Cohen, this tale of a Neanderthal in the modern world was a picture so awful
that it seemed a downright deliberate attempt at high camp. In an odd way. it
worked - the picture is now a cult film of sorts, Francis, however, doesn’t
count himself among IVog’s newfound admirers. "What a terrible film that
was. I did it because of Joan Crawford, and poor Joan by this time was a very
sad old lady. We had to have idiot cards all over the place because she could-
n't remember her lines. It was the last thing she ever did and she shouldn’t
''Chris siways used
to say that he wished
he could stop doing
these things, and by
that time, I wished I
could stop doing
them as well.**
HAMMER HORROR
Trog, 'the fii/l/on
year man’, in action
whilst a con/used
Joan Crawford iooks
on. ‘It was the test
thing she everdia,"
Francis femembeis,
'endsheshouWn’t
hare done it -
neither shou/d I. '
The fiacit cover of the strifcing press book promoting Tales From the Crypt.
have done it - neither should I. She had no friends, and she kept writing sad
letters to my wife and I until she died.”
After filming Maisie Mosco’s stage play of familial madness. Mumsy,
Nanny, Sonny and Girly (1969), and moonlighting in Germany on the
abysmal horror sex farce The
Vampire Happening (1970) - which
he disowns - Francis returned to
the waiting arms of Amicus,
who had, by then, signed a
co-production arrangement with
Charles Fries’s Metromedia
Producers Corporation to bring the
famed EC horror comics of the
t9S0s to the screen. Francis was
put on deck in September 1971 to
oversee the first - Tales From the
Crypt. “1 think the portmanteau
films are automatically comics
anyway,” he reasons. "It was nice
to be working on a film that was
Metromedia’s first feature, and it
made a fortune - but not for Max
and Milton.”
Talcs was the fifth film in which
Francis worked with Peter Cushing,
and it was not long after the death
of Cushing’s beloved wife Helen.
Contrary to popular belief, Cushing
was not distraught on the set, and
the two men decided to work in a
homage to Helen in Cushing’s episode. “Any time I did a film with Peter we’d
always meet a week before,” says Francis. “He’d come up to Charing Cross by
train and we’d have tea in the station. He mentioned the dead wife in the
script and asked if I minded him calling her Helen - I told him I didn't and
asked if he wanted to use Helen’s pictures, an idea he
loved. I didn’t find him impaired at all on that picture.”
With Tales, Francis bid a final farewell to Amicus, for
whom he had directed seven pictures, more than any
other director the company used. “I was getting a bit
disenchanted with the set-up - the underbudgeting and so
forth. One gets a bit bored with this and having to write
40 minutes of the script each time. So I was really pleased
to get away from it.”
He’d burned his bridges with both Hammer and
Amicus, and yet the horror scripts kept coming. In a
British film industry undergoing a major recession, about
the only films that could find financing in the early 1970s
were those that cost little and could return the investment
- and horror fit the bill. The reality was plain: if Francis
wanted to direct, he would have to direct horror films.
Since he had done wonders for rookie Metromedia with a
horror film, John Heyman’s World Film Services figured
Francis could do it for them as well, and in January 1972
he began shooting their first film - a co-production with
Tony Tenser’s ’Tigon Films called The Creeping Flesh.
"A couple of young lads [Peter Spenceley and Jonathan
Rumbold] had written this horror story and John Heyman
was going to make it WFS’s first film. They asked me to do it and it was
much more professional than my other horror films because we had a proper
producer in Mike Redbourn.” Professional, certainly, but audiences felt a bit
cheated when the title monster didn’t see action until late in the film. “I think
with such an outrageous thing as that, the less you see it, the better!” is the
director’s comment.
On the strength of The Creeping Flesh, Francis and Norman Priggen
approached John Heyman with a script called Witness Madness - written by
actress Jennifer Jayne and husband Art Fairbank (hence the credit ‘Jay
Fairbank’) as a fanciful anthology picture. After only a few minutes in
Heyman's office and some wrangling with Paramount on the teletype, a deal
was struck. As Francis recalls, ’’Frank Yablans, who ran Paramount, said ‘Go
ahead and make it’ purely on having read the reviews for Tales From the
Crypt. So because of that, we had to call this one Tales that Witness
Madness." But giving his blessing off-the-cuff worked against Yablans, who
was a bit surprised at a screening of the rough cut in late 1972. “After we
showed it,” Francis relates, “I said, ’What’d you think of it, Frank?’ and he
said, ’It’s not a horror film.’ 1 said, 'It was never meant as a horror film,
Frank.’ So we had to reshoot parts of it and try to make it into a horror film.”
The picture was to have one of the strongest casts Francis had ever worked
with, including Jack Hawkins (whose throat cancer resulted in his being
dubbed by Charles Gray), Joan Collins, Donald Pleasence, Georgia Brown and
Kim Novak, who substituted for Rita Hayworth after the latter had simply
walked off the picture during filming and never returned. “I think it was the
beginning of her Alzheimer’s,”
Francis suggests. "She
purported to be ill, so we
arranged with the insurance
doctors to let her have a week
off. During that week, she just
disappeared.”
One person who hadn’t
disappeared, unfortunately for
Francis, was TVog’s Herman
Cohen, who returned to the
scene bearing a script based on
Henry Seymour’s novel Infernal
Idol. It told of an antiques
dealer who practises black ,
magic and sacrifices women to
an African idol in return for
prosperity. Francis was lured in
by the casting of jack Palance in
the lead role, and the filming of
what became known as Craze
began in February of 1973. It
turned out to be as big a
mistake for all involved as Trog
had been, as Francis regretfully
confirms, “Even Jack couldn’t
help that one. I thought we could’ve made something of it with Jack, but once
again Herman had this old Aben Kandel writing the scripts and I think Abe
would do anything Herman told him.” Kandel was in good company, however,
as the likes of Diana Dors, Dame Edith Evans, Trevor Howard and Hugh
Long flefore fle re-opened Dr Finlay's case book, David Rintoul starred in 1975's Legend of the Werewolf.
12 HAMMEft HORROR
Kine Weekly, 1964.
|[ film-clircctitii; credits. Television work includes episodes of T/ie Sitinl.
Man in u Si/iJciise. The Aclvenliircs of lUack Ucaiity, nnd .Slur Miiiticns.
Tivo (i;k/ Tivo AJuke Six; The Day of the Tnfficis loddilional
scenes only): Veiiyeance: ■
Pr Terror's House of Horrors: Traitor's Hale: The Shull
The Psychopiilh: The Deadly Ikes
They I'cime from JitTond S/hjcc; Torliire (iiirdcn
; T/je inlM'pu/ A/r Tu’t"!; (siiorlj
AJumsy, \'unny, Sonny and (lirly
Troi’: The Vampire Happenin;^
Tales From the Ciypl: The Crcepi;?^!’ Flesh: Tales That U'ilfic.ss Aluc/iie.s.s
Crure; .S'lxi of nnicu/ii
TIk'
l.ctlL'/u/ of the ll'ereivo/f
Go/c/cn Keodeivou.s fudd/liomil scenes only)
The Doctor and the Deeds
Dark Toiver (as Ken tkirnell)
Griffith all swallowed their pride in exchange for Cohen’s cheque.
If 1973 started on a bad note for Francis, it was to finish on a
horrendous chorus. For the first and only time, he was thrust into
the alien world of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll at the behest of
none other than Ringo Starr. The coffin lid was closing on
Francis's career as a director, and nothing helped to seal his fate
more than his involvement in the virtually unseen musical
comedy Son of Dracula. As is the case with many films, the story
behind the scenes is much more interesting than anything that
wound up on screen. “Ringo called me and said he had this
script he wanted me to read," Francis recollects. "In those days,
nobody said no to Ringo, so I read it. I told him it was terrible,
so he asked me to rewrite it and, with my friends (lennifer Jayne
and Art FairbankJ, we wrote a script about the son of Dracula,
Count Down. Ringo wanted David Bowie for the lead but Bowie
wouldn't do it. So Ringo got Harry Nilsson instead; Ringo asked
me what 1 thought of him and I said, 'He’s fine, but he's playing
a vampire and there's lots of close shots of his mouth and he’s
got such terrible teeth!’ So they whipped him round to a dentist,
pulled all his teeth and replaced them! A week before we started
to shoot, Ringo called me to his house and said, 'I’ve got a very
good idea, Freddie - Tm gonna make it a musical!' So a week into the film,
we were going to shoot some numbers in a refurbished club called TVamps,
but Ringo said we couldn’t get the musicians there in the morning. I called
him and said, 'What the hell’s going on? 1 want them there at 8 o’clock!'
'I can't get them there at 8 o’clock,’ Ringo said. 'They're all too rich!' And that
was how the thing went on, what with these people and their drinking and
drugs. It was a mad scene, really."
Francis had had enough. He was sick of horror, sick of being pigeonholed
and sick of crazy projects. The only thing that could convince him to make
another horror film was, ironically, blood - family blood, as it turned out. His
son Kevin had become an independent producer with the Lana Turner thriller
Persecution (J973), and his company Tyburn was set to produce two period
horror films from Anthony Hinds scripts. The first. The Ghoul, went on the
Pinewood floor in March 1974, and reunited Francis with Peter Cushing and
Veronica Carlson in a 'thing in the attic' tale. August 1974, meanwhile, saw
the Pinewood production of Legend of the Werewolf, a revision of Hinds’s
earlier The Curse of the Werewolf “I don’t think 1 would’ve done those if my
son hadn’t produced them,” Francis admits. “I thought I was helping him
out." Not, mind you, that the experience was an unpleasant one. 'T had a lot
of friends around me on these two films, and I really enjoyed being back at
Pinewobd and working with Peter. Veronica, dear old Ron Moody and my old
friend Roy Castle."
Despite the announcement that Francis would direct Tyburn's The Satanisf
in the summer of 1975, with a script by Hinds and featuring Cushing, Shirley
Bassey and (possibly) Orson Welles, the film would never be made. With the
exception of episodic television, Francis's directorial career was to lay
dormant for ten years. As he attests, he was just bored with it all and saw
little hope on the horizon. “I just didn’t want to make any more horror films
and that was all I was
Just didn't want
to make any more
horror films and that
was all I was belns
offered. I did hope to
do some other things,
but 7Ae Bophant
Man came alons."
eccentric wiinderkind David Lynch.
After shooting The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), Francis rejoined
Lynch in March 1983 at Churubusco Studios in Mexico for the epic science-
fiction film Dune. It was an assignment accepted on the basis of friendship,
and Francis was to quickly find out that working for Dino De Laurentiis
meant striving to stabilise a hopelessly overblown and overhyped film.
“I didn't like the picture; I did it only for David. I hate special effects - when
I shoot a picture, I like what I shoot to go on the screen and not to be
diffused by lots of other things. It was much loo slow and I tried to tell David
this. It was about four hours when we shot it, and cutting it to two hours
didn’t speed it up. David did create some nice things to look at, though."
Not long after the Dune debacle, the opportunity finally arose for Francis
to direct a story he'd long wanted to make. At the start of 1985, with backing
from Mel Brooks, whose company had produced The Elephant Man, he began
filming The Doctor and the DeWls, the latest in a long line of tales inspired by
the legend of Dr Knox and graverobbers Burke and Hare. It was Francis’s first
time in the director’s chair in a decade, but his comeback would be bitter-
sweet. "Around the time of Creeping Flesh and Witness Madness I met a
doctor, who was involved with [directorj Nicholas Ray. The doctor had gotten
being offered. I did hope to
do some other things, but
The Elephant Man came
along." In October 1979,
the rebirth of Freddie
Francis as a cinema-
tographer took place
under the direction of the
the rights to a Dylan Thomas script about Dr Knox from Nick - who’d begun
shooting it until the producer ran off with the money. We'd been trying to set
it up since the mid-seventies. Dylan wrote it with an ends-justifying-the-
means theme and I tried to make it that way, but the final scenes that dealt
with that question were cut out. So the points didn't come over. It was a bit
like what happened with the Dracula picture.
Several years have passed since Francis last directed a feature, but one
could probably say that he’s more respected and professionally fulfilled now
than ever. In 1990, he won his second Oscar for G/ory, and he can boast of
working with some of the top directors in the business - Bruce Beresford
(Her Af/bi, 1989), Robert
Mulligan (The Man in the
Moon, 1991) and, of
course, Martin Scorsese.
Taking a final look back
at his own directorial
efforts, Francis chooses
to remember the process
rather than the product:
“Even with the ghastly
scripts I’ve done, with a
couple of exceptions I
always enjoyed making
the movies." At 78 years
old, Freddie Francis is
still enjoying making
movies, safe in the
knowledge that he is
finally freed from the dark
shadow of all those
horror films. .
HAMMER HORROR
13
«*
^ s lovelorn barmaid Zena, fell under
the Count's spell In Dracula Has Risen From the Grave.
caught up with the actress on tour In
Bristol, to take tea and talk cheesecake . . .
//«« ive or six years ago," recalls Barbara Ewing, “I was doing Mrs
f f I ' Warren's Profession on tour with the Cambridge Theatre Company.
^ After a matinee in Warwick, I got this message over the tannoy that
I there were some people to see me. So 1 went out and there were
X these two very white-faced boys waiting for me. They were nice
boys, and they had with them a French book, full of colour photos of Dracula
Has Risen from (he Grove, which they wanted me to sign. They were horror
film freaks and they'd never been to the theatre before; it was a new
experience for them. They’d come all the way to Warwick to see me and sat
through Mrs Warren’s Profession to meet me afterwards
and get the programme signed. I thought that was rather
good. If Hammer can have that effect . . .’’
Hammer’s unlikely role in keeping alive the
theatre-going habit comes under discussion in a suitably
theatrical setting, over tea and chocolate biscuits in
Barbara’s dressing room at the Bristol Old Vic.
Theatregoers in the South West had the rare treat, in
March and April, of seeing her unique interpretation of
Mrs Hardcastle in Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer, which is certainly a far
cry from the earthy Zena of Dracufa Has Risen From the Grave, one of the
most memorable of Hammer’s many vampire lovers.
“There really is something extraordinary about those films”, Barbara
maintains. "1 did Torture Garden first. That was an Amicus picture for
Columbia which was directed by Freddie Francis. He was my mentor really,
because having cast me in Torlure Garden he put me straight into Oracufa
Has Risen From the Grave, which was his next picture. He was a lovely man,
and such a fantastic cinematographer. His son, Kevin, I remember, was a
runner on the Dracula picture. Anyway, Torture Garden was a series of short
stories with Michael Bryant and myself and a Canadian actress called Beverly
Adams as the linking characters. As soon as we got going, Beverly and I were
sent to Vidal Sassoon to have our hair done, and she ended up marrying him,
thanks entirely to Torture Garden! Jack Palance was in it too, and when he
invited me out to dinner I nearly fainted. I mean. I used to save his picture
when I was a kid, and 1 was just out of drama school and Jack Palance was
taking me out to dinner! It was the most thrilling experience of my life and it
was the first time I’d ever seen people go up to an actor and say, ’lust a
minute - 1 know you!’, and they’d be kind of prodding him and touching him
in the lift. He’d be tremendously cool about it, of course.
"John Standing was my boyfriend in that and his mother's ghost got into
a grand piano and killed me. This grand piano was
playing the Death March and pushed me across the
room and out of the window. All very plausible! That
was my first film, and I’d not done any telly at that
point, only theatre - so I learned a few interesting
lessons from it. Burgess Meredith, who had a very
slight palsy even then, would be saying a line and in
the middle of it he'd start swearing! He took me aside
and said. ‘That’s what you do, dear, if you don’t think
the line’s gone very well. If you don't like the take, just swear, 'cos then
they'll have to cut it.' The luckiest thing of all, though, was working with
Michael Bryant. He'd be chatting away and they’d say, ‘Stand by’ and he’d
simply turn his head and he wouldn’t change his voice tone from the way he
was speaking to you, to the way he was talking in front of the camera. You've
got to learn camera technique somehow - and we certainly weren't taught it at
RADA - so I learned it from Michael Bryant. Sometimes people go 'up' for the
camera but it doesn’t work at all.”
Barbara concedes, however, that the 'conversational' approach wouldn't
work for everyone, least of all for Christopher Lee in the decidedly un-chatty
role of Count Dracula. "Well, Christopher was very aware that he was doing
something quite different to the rest of us, who were all playing ‘real’ people.
used to save his
picture when I was
a kid, and I was Just
out 0)f drama school
and Jack Palance
was taking me out
to dinner!”
14 HAMMER HORROR
He took it all very, very seriously; to
my observation, there was nothing
tongue-in-cheek about his way of working at
ail. He was deadly serious about it. It's the
same with something outrageous like She
Stoops to Conquer because, in my opinion,
whatever you're acting in, you have to
believe in it every second. The moment you
start any ‘nudge-nudge, wink-wink', it all
collapses. And in the Dracula picture there
was never a flicker of sending it up. Freddie
certainly took it seriously - he was from
serious stuff - and the producer, Aida Young,
whom 1 got on very well with, was
absolutely serious too. Of course, I was just
starting in the profession - 1 was jolly lucky
to be doing any films at all - so I was
serious about everything at that time. I'd
just play the scenes and I'd really be going
for it and I could’ve had my back to the
camera If Freddie hadn't stopped me. I was
unaware of such technicalities because I'd
been playing leads in the theatre and the
culture clash was quite considerable.”
But Barbara, whose second ever job was
playing Nora in A Doil’s House at the Bristol
Old Vic, had already suffered a culture clash
far profounder than that between Henrik
Ibsen and Hammer horror. "I'm a New
Zealander and I got a scholarship to come
over here. In the sixties, anyone who
showed any talent at all was immediately
shipped off to England. And there was nothing to go back to at that time -
there was no film industry, hardly any theatre and, of course, it's a very small
country. It has just three million people, and there
are probably three million here in Bristol. It’s a
very different story nowadays, what with Heavenly
Creatures, An Angel at My Table, Once Were
Warriors, The Piano and all those films. But back
then, I found myself in England and it was all
very, yery difficult. So I decided that, as soon as
RADA was over. I'd go home. But then I got the
Gold Medal and a lot of agent interest and 1 said to myself, ‘Oh well, I’ll just
stay for a minute,’ and here we are, many, many years later! I’ve never quite
become an English person, though. At RADA they were so determined to get
mmm,
'^Whatever you’re actins
In, you have to believe In
It every eecond. The
moment you atari any
‘nudse-nudse, wInk-wInk’,
It all collapaea.”
rid of my accent - these days they wouldn’t be quite so single-minded.
I'm sure - and it was a very, very big culture shock. I'm surprised I survived
it. Maybe it was at some price to some part of
myself,” she laughs. "But in a way I'm quite
lucky because I do act in New Zealand whenever
I’m asked. I did Blanche du Bois in Wellington,
for Instance. It doesn't have the tradition or the
class system of here, so it's a very different way
of working.” Straight after Mrs Hardcastle, in
fact, Barbara went into a particularly intriguing
Antipodean project, playing the title role in a Maori production of Brecht's
Mother Courage.
Barbara recently revisited the horror genre, playing the lethal lollipop lady
in the Number Six instalment of
Yorkshire Television's Chiller
series, but she recalls her stint in
the golden age of British horror
with special fondness. "They've
got a sort of nostalgic appeal,
those films, haven’t they? Because
it's kind of innocent, that kind of
horror. There was a sort of
innocence around in those days,
though I expect the Carreras guys
knew what they were up to. Ail
that sexual innuendo In the
Hammer films! The bedroom
scene with Barry Andrews,
incidentally, was the first time
I’d ever kissed anyone on screen.
Freddie was very sweet about it:
he said, ‘Don't worry, we’ll clear
the studio.' It all seems so silly
now!
“I remember them saying to
me, 'Bring along your starlet's kit
and we'll do some photographs.’
Well, I didn't have any starlet's
kit - this was the sixties, so all
1 had were mini-dresses and
things like that. I remember the
photographer - some very old
guy who’d obviously been
taking these shots for years and
HAMMER HORROR
15
years - saying to me, 'Now lick your lips and blow a kiss to the camera.’
And I simply burst into tears! I was just hopeless at all that. As a matter
of fact, I’ve got an extremely funny photo from that session, rather like
an old Betty Grable cheesecake shot only more vulgar. I used to hide it
but 1 don’t care about it now. I’m in the boots and the stockings and
suspenders and the
special Hammer bosom.
I'm actually quite a small
person, and at the time I
weighed about seven
stone, but thanks to
Hammer’s wardrobe
mistress I was made to look . . .
well, you’ve seen the film! She
taught me this little bosom trick,
which many years later Ixarried over to Agnes Fairchild in Brass. So you can
look at Zena and Agnes and compare and contrast!”
In the Granada series Brass, Barbara lampooned her own image as
"the dour, sexually repressed Northern matron. After Country Mafters, which
was my first big telly and which was nominated for an Emmy, I was in Sam.
actually quite a
small person, and at
the time I weished
about seven stone, but
thanks to Hammer’s
wardrobe mistress I was
made to iook ... weil,
you’ve soo n the fiim!”
Geoff Hinslif^,
Berbers Ewing and
Timothy West in Brass.
"When / had the idea
of using the Hammer
bosom, they were so
tbriHed it soon
became a feature of
the scripts," Barbara
remembers.
That, together with Hard Times, got me typecast for a while, rather curiously
for a New Zealander, as people coming from somewhere between Manchester
and Leeds. So when I went to the interview for Brass, the authors said, ’Oh
no, not her! She’s the one we’re sending up!’ 1 said to them, ’Well, why can’t
I send myself up?' And when I had the idea of using the Hammer bosom, they
were so thrilled it soon became a feature of the scripts."
In addition to numerous television appearances, she’s also had a novel
published and written her own one-woman show (about Russian
revolutionary Alexandra Kollontai), which has toured ail over the world.
"Also, having met Ewan Hooper on Dracula Has Risen From the Grave. I did
some interesting work for him at the Greenwich Theatre when he first
opened it. It’s very established now, but it
was always his 'baby'. Very good actor.
Extraordinary that Hammer chose to dub him; he was extremely upset about
that. When he had to put me on the fire, they hadn't told me that there were
some firemen behind the furnace ready to 'bellow it up’ at the appropriate
moment. So I screamed and they had to cut. I was doing the Burgess
Meredith trick but completely involuntarily! 1 got such a fright. Another
frightening bit was being chased by that coach. The stuntman kept saying,
'Don’t worry, I shan’t catch up with you’, but the old hooves seemed to be
pounding very, very close to me as I ran through that forest!”
Barbara agrees that there’s a great missed opportunity in Dracula Has
Risen From the Grave. By a quirk of Tony Hinds’s script, Zena is prevented
from joining Hammer’s distinguished line of lady vampires: no sooner has she
sprouted fangs than Dracula orders the priest to shove her into the furnace.
"Well, she’d just discovered that Dracula
was only using her to get to whatever-her-
name-was - Maria - so I doubt whether, in
that overwrought stale, Zena would have
agreed to come back as a vampire! But I do
remember thinking,' Gosh, it cost them a lot
of money to get these fangs fitted, so why
didn’t they show them some more? And I
was very excited because I thought I might
get to keep them. But oh no, they weren’t
having any of that! They wouldn’t fit
anyone else, I thought, so what would they
use them for? But coming back as a vampire
. . . wouldn’t that have been great?" “f"
16 HAMMER HORROR
fl
hi
Clerical Duties
C entral to the Count's machinations in Dracula Has Risen
From the Grave was his reluctant disciple, the priest.
Adam Jezard defrocks actor Ewan Hooper.
A lready an established theatre and television performer, Ewan
believes he was asked to join the cast of Dracula Has Risen From
the Grave as he had already worked with director Freddie Francis
in television. "Freddie was a splendid director," Ewan recalls.
"He was sympathetic and creative as far as the actors were
concerned and, of course, he brought all that experience as a cameraman
and a film-maker to it."
Ewan's role called upon him to discover the body of a young girl -
drained of blood, needless to say - stuffed inside the bell of his church
tower and to trail the Monsignor, played by Rupert Davies, through the
mountains to nail a cross to the door of Castle Dracula. It is on this
journey that the priest trips, cutting open his
head, and it is this blood which revives the
vampire Count, who sets out to avenge himself
on the Monsignor and makes the priest an
unwilling instrument of his revenge.
“People still remember me in it, especially
after it's just been on television and it's fresh
in their memory," says Ewan. "What I
remember most is having a good time, There
were some really talented people making it,
and I remember we just enjoyed it very much. Probably the reason why
it was successful, and the others too, was that people enjoyed working
on them."
Ewan has fond memories of his co-stars. "Rupert Davies had, I think,
been playing Maigret just prior to the making of the film," Ewan says.
"All 1 can remember was that he was very nice.
“The thing I remember most, however, was having lunches with
Christopher Lee. He was fascinating, and although lots of people have
talked about it since, we were amazed to find out he had been an
intelligence officer and had interviewed the leading Nazis at the end
of the war.”
Coming from television productions, which were still mostly recorded
^'Freddie Francis was out
of the country, but he
called me when he got
back, very upset my part
had been totally redubbed
... it's probably one of
the reascMis why I have
never seen the film.**
in sequence from beginning
to end almost as theatrical
performances, going onto the
set of a major movie was a
change of pace. “In television
there was a lot of pressure
on us to go through the
performance without
stopping,” he explains.
"We were filmed with five
cameras, because videotape
editing was very expensive.
You had to look upon it more
or less as if it were a stage
play. Film was quite different
from that, doing it all back to
front and taking a lot of
trouble over each individual
shot, which would come
together in the editing room.
It was a different technique
altogether."
The actor was also
impressed by the facilities at
Pinewood Studios, where the
indoor sequences were filmed.
"It was quite a big studio," he
says. “It was where they made
the Bond movies and filmed
Ch/IIy Chilly Bong Bang. I had
mostly worked in television,
and it was pretty Impressive
stuff I thought. The kind of detail that went into the work on the big
sound stages was quite incredible."
For the scenes in which Ewan is seen driving Dracula's hearse and for
some of the climbing sequences with Rupert Davies and Barry Andrews,
as the film’s hero, Ewan remembers being taken on location to Surrey.
“1 remember Box Hill, because both Barry and 1 were crazy about rugby
and we used to kick a ball about up there."
During Dracula’s death scene, Ewan had to recite a prayer in Latin - it
being an added script device that the king vampire wouldn’t die unless
scripture was read over him by a true believer after the monster was
staked - but learning the ancient text proved no problem for the actor.
"1 learned the prayer in sections," Ewan recalls. "That made it easier!"
Despite some happy memories, one unfortunate post-production
incident served to mar the experience for Ewan. 'T got a phone call one
day asking me to go along for some dubbing sessions, but I was so busy
I didn’t have time," he remembers. “Freddie Francis was out of the
country, but he called me when he got back, very upset my part had been
totally redubbed. The producer had done it while he was away. Freddie
told me to get my agent on to it, but unfortunately it was in the contract
and there was nothing we could do. 1 was very angry about it and it’s
probably one of the reasons why I have never seen the film.”
Ewan confesses not to be surprised that people still remember Dracula
Has Risen from the Grave, but he is amazed
at the amount of times it is shown on
television. "It seems to crop up fairly
regularly," he says. “You think, ‘if only I
were getting royalties.' but that’s all our
fault. We were offered extra money to buy
our exploitation rights, and thought, 'that's
great, we're getting extra money up front,’
without realising it would have been a great
deal more sensible to take the royalties.”
After the film's release in 1968, Ewan opened the Greenwich Theatre,
which he had been raising money for and building in the seven years
prior to its launch in 1969, and which he ran until 1978. He also had a
leading role as Detective Smith in the successful 1960s series Hunter’s
Wolk,. which ran for 39 episodes. Although his main love is theatre,
Ewan also gave a memorable and moving performance as Julie Walters’
father in the 1987 film Personal Services. “I was one of the few
characters who didn’t take my clothes off or put women’s clothes on in
that film," he laughs. Now a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company,
Ewan is acting in three plays. The Broken Heart, Henry V and Coriolanus,
all of which will be transferring to the Barbican in London by September
for a repertory season. "i"
HAMMER HORROR 17
D enis Meikle tells
the tale of Hammer Film -v
Productions' finest hour.
“/ am here thfs morning as Her Majesty’s lieutenant in the
County of Bucfe/ngham to present to your company the
Queen’s Award to Industry 1 968 .. .You are the first British
film production company to receive the Queen's Award, and
this is a distinction of which you can all be proud. Vour
company has made over one hundred films. These films have
been played with much success in all parts of the world,
which shows that the work produced by your company is of
the highest quality and technical achievement."
Brigadier Sir Henry floyd
I t was during the final week of shooting on Dracula Has
Risen From the Grave that Hammer Film Productions was
presented with the Queen's Award to Industry for 1968, in
recognition of having generated export earnings of nearly
£3million in the three years from 1965 to 1967. ^
rhe presentation of the Award was scheduled to be made at
noon on Wednesday 29th May at Pinewood Studios, and the
Queen's representative for the occasion, Brigadier Sir Henry
Floyd, Lord Lieutenant of the County of Buckingham, was to
tour the set beforehand in the company of the Hammer direc-
tors - James Carreras, Anthony Hinds and Brian Lawrence,
look in on the shooting {which, incidentally, happened to be of
the last scene in the film), and meet the cast. His introduction
to the star of Dracula Has Risen From the Grave, Christopher Lee, came as
he watched the actor writhing in agony as Count Dracula struggled with a
metre-long cross of gold rammed throu^ his chest! Sir Henry's speech, pre-
pared in advance (in consultation with Carreras) and delivered only a few
minutes later, contained the following ironic passage; "I know that you have
had great success with what are termed ‘horror films’, but I was glad to learn
from your Chairman that the word ‘horror’ does not include scenes of actu-
al personal violence . . .” The assembled guests managed to maintain
admirably straight faces, but there were those among them who wondered if
Hammer
receive
Queen’s
Award
THE QUEEN'S AWARD to
Induttry 1968 was presented
to Hammer Films by Sir
Henry Floyd, Lord Lieutenant
of the County of Buckingham-
shire, at a ceremony which
took place at Pinewood Studios
on Wednesday 29 May.
HAMMER FILMS, who are
currently producing "Dracula
Rises From The Grave” at
Pinewood, tendered a
luncheon to Sir Henry and
Lady Floyd at the studios and
among others present were
Christopher Lee, Pewr
Cushing, Veronica Carlson,
Tony Nelson Ken, Aida
Young. John Trevelyan. Bar-
bara Ewing, and executives
and members of the staff of
Hammer Films.
JAMES CARRERAS, Tony
Hinds and Brian Lawrence,
directors of Hammer, hosted
the function.
the Brigadier had actually seen what he had just been looking at.
The Award itself was received on behalf of Hammer by long-serving con-
struction manager Arthur Banks, in front of Carreras, Hinds, Lee, the cast
and crew of the film as well as other Pinewood staff, a contingent of the
national press - and Peter Cushing, who had been invited along to join in
the celebrations. A photo<all took place outside Pinewood^ Green Room
(which can be glimpsed as part of the village set in the film), and the whole
gathering then sat down to a luncheon of salmon, strawbenies, and pink
champagne.
18 HAMMER HORROR
s
SKETCH
fit Jjtn yportets’ occolade Is golHB^ to
S^llBi-spinniu luiiot film mokeis
mmm
QUEEIKSmRD
Opposite page: Colonel
James Carreras in Pis office,
July 1968. A Iftrteiy Club
Award adorns die wall - even
greater accolades were to
The ceremony at PInewood
Studios was given extensive
coverage In The Daily
Cinema.
Left: The Daily Sketch of
20th April 1968 frumpeted
the new of Hammer’s
Below: Charlie Drake's mes-
sealed a thinly veiled threat
to thrash the Colonel at golf.
Hammer had previously
invested in Drake's 1960
film Sands of the Desert.
Hammer’s formal application to be considered for the Award had been
submitted by James Carreras to the Office of the Queen's Award to Industry
in October 1967. An audited breakdown of the company's trading results for
the three previous years accompanied the application, which showed that
foreign earnings for Hammer’s films were close to £500,000 for the year end-
ing September 1965, just under £I million for the next twelve months, and
over in respect of the same period for 1967. This represented an increase
from 47% to 82% in the ratio of foreign to domestic revenue for those three
years. (The fact that the UK take for Hammer’s films had declined by more
than 50% in the same three-year period was of little relevance in context.)
“This company has made a very real and substantial contribution to the
United Kingdom's balance of payments,” Carreras wrote. ’’While the actual
amounts may appear to be relatively modest as compared with, for example,
large industrial organisations in other industries, they do represent, we
believe, a considerably and consistently higher level of export earnings than
is the case generally in the film industry. In fact the percentage increase in
our overseas receipts at a time when the home market has remained static,
underlines the extent of this company’s achievement in the export field.”
The Hammer board were informed that their application had been
approved for an Award on lOth April 1968, and James Carreras was quick
to suggest that the presentation be made at Hammer House in Soho^
Wardour Street (to save the company the embarrassment of receiving it in
an empty studio, since Hammer had vacated Bray in the interim). “Lords
Lieutenant have heavy commitments,” Hammer was informed. “In general,
presentation at a factory is much preferred to a ceremony at head office.” In
response to the Office’s egalitarian ideal of including all of those responsi-
ble for a company’s achievements in the 'prize-giving,' the venue was
quickly switched to Pinewood instead, where “a Dracula subject” was now
in production. In his letter of confiimation to Sir Henry Floyd, Carreras
advised, “Hammer Film Productions ate the only British production com-
pany ever to receive the Queen’s Award. Hammer has grown ... to the
leading position as an independent production company in the British
film industry. We have made over one hundred films and they have
played most successfully in all parts of the world.” In a reference to the
change of venue, he added (to correct his previous enor), 'We will have with
us technicians who have been with us for twenty years or more and, as I
explained to you, we are tenants at the Rank studio at Pinewood, but we
thought it would be a good idea to receive our presentation at a studio,
where all these productions are created . . .”
Among the 84 other recipients of the Award that year were Rolls-Royce,
Decca, ICl, GEC, Vacuum
^^Hammer Film
Productions are
the oniy British
production company
ever to receive the
Queen’s Awards”
Carreras wrote.
**Hammer has srawn
... to the leading”
position as an
independent
production company
in the British
film industry.”
ment. The Daily Sketch of Saturday 20th April led the field; “DRACULA
AND CO. WIN QUEEN’S AWARD" ran the front-page banner headline, rel-
egating other news of the day to the inside pages of the paper. “After twelve
blood-soaked years of horror. Hammer Film Productions is to receive the
highest honour Britain can give to a dollar-eamer - the Queen’s Award to
Industry,” proclaimed reporters Fergus Cashin and Sydney Brennan.
“Colonel Jim Carreras, chairman of the film firm that grew up with Dracula,
Frankenstein and Zombies, commented last night: 'I’m shocked ... but
#
greetings
'TELEGITA^m
#
\
-I,'
*rp4)[) vr
s.ors.,
Research Ltd of Norfolk,
Severnslde Foods Ltd of
Bristol, the Rank Taylor
Hobson Division of the
Rank Otganisation (which
had itself won the Award
two years running), and the
Northern Ireland office of
Grundig - but it was
Hammer that received most
of the press attention.
In breaking an official
embargo on the announce-
dellghted, of course,' Dracula - otherwise Christopher Lee - was impressed,
but not altogether surprised. “Why not? provide global entertainment.
We get fan mail from every country behind the iron curtain ... It is a mag-
nificent thing. We have made a significant contribution to the British econ-
omy.' Col. Carreras said at his home at Forest Row, Sussex, that Hammer
has brought £5 million into Britain in the past three years. And most of it
has been made with horror and blood,” Cashin and Brennan concluded.
The Daily Telegraph’s report of the same day spoke also of an "estimat-
ed” £5 million - a rounded-up exaggeration of the actual amount, just as the
70% average export earnings became 80% in Sunday’s News of the World -
but that’s showbusiness. “The Award . . . goes to Hammer Films, the ghoul-
and-gore specialists,” David Roxan announced. “This means that films like
The Brides of Dracula and Frankenstein Created Woman have received a
royal accolade.”
The remainder of the nation's dailies joined in the throng on Monday
22nd April, the day after the embargo was lifted. Perhaps because Hammer’s
latest horror film, which was to commence production that very morning,
was another “Dracula subject”. The Times concentrated on the part played
HAMMER HORROR
19
(literally) by Christopher Lee in the Hammer success story, (At this juncture,
Lee had only played Dracula twice, whereas Peter Cushing's Baron
Frankenstein had indulged in his nefarious activities on four separate occa-
sions.) "Why ... has such success come to Hammer’s monster-in-chief, Mr
Christopher Lee, who can justifiably be described as a typical Englishman,”
asked Henry Blyth, who then proceeded to provide an answer of sorts to his
own curious question. “A product of Wellington [College], a prominent
cricketer, a scratch golfer, and a man of Edwardian demeanour - tall
of figure, austere, and immaculately dressed . . . Dracula, in the per-
son of Mr Lee, has never been seen as a figure of fun, and the char-
acter has never been parodied. There is a touch of pathos, almost of
tragedy in the man. Thus there is nothing really incongruous about
an actor who spends much of his time in the Gothic gloom of a
medieval dungeon, casting long and agonized glances, and the rest
of it thinking difficult putts at Sunningdale, for to each task must be
brought a careful and refined technique: a staid and even austere-
approach . . .
“There are other studios making horror films,” Blyth went on to
observe, "but without an equal success. The answer, of course, is
that Hammer have the knack. They have a feel for the period, just as
Bram Stoker had it. Sax Rohmer had it, and Robert Louis Stevenson
had it. The title of Hammer's next production is significant. It is
Dracula Has Risen From the Grave. The fact that he’s been doing so
now for more than a decade with the regularity of a jack in the box
is immaterial. It is back to the dungeons for the art director and back
to the cemetery for Mr Lee. Dracula is rising again and long may he contin-
ue to do so.”
The Daily Express also found itself in the Lee camp when it came to
apportioning credit for the achievement. "Hammer Films, which makes most
of the British horror movies, has been given one of the Queen’s Awards,”
wrote Alix Palmer. "But it is really Mr Lee, its monster king, who should col-
lect." Lee was then given an opportunity to expound
his views on horror films - and on being Hammer’s
“monster king.” He did so at some length. "If you are
Sean Connery, known as James Bond, then you go on
making Bond pictures. If you are Christopher Lee,
known as Count Dracula, then you go on beii^
Dracula,” the actor explained. “But these films aren’t
easy to do. 7b take a story and a part which we know
is unbelievable and make an audience believe that
what they are seeing can happen is almost impossible,
especially in the Western world which is so cynical . .
. I’m very grateful for being a predominant performer
in a smaJI field. In showbusiness that is very impor-
tant. Stars who are made overnight come in pacb of
twenty. They flare up and bum out. But, as an actor who has devoted his life
to acting, I hope I can go on finding parts, varying the mixture from time to
time. Of course I would like to do big things other than fantasies, because I
know I am capable. Meanwhile I'll do the occasional fantasy and continue
to be popular. I find that very satisfying.”
James Caneras analysed the reasons behind the popularity of Hammer’s
honor films in his own Inimitable way, in a three-minute item for Radio 4’s
The World This Weekend. “’When the first Frankenstein in colour showed at
the Warner Theatre about ten years ago, we used to know how successful
we were by the number of people who used to faint,” he infonned inter-
viewer Geoffrey Wareham. “In fact I used to ring up the manner the next
morning and say: 'Well, how many faints did we have last night?' And then
I’d know what sort of returns we were doing. But they’ve got used to them
now, and we don't have anybody faintii^ at all."
“What was the most honific film you ever made?" Wareham pursued. “1
think the firet Dracula." Carreras replied. “They’d never seen blood in red
before: they'd never seen it in ib proper colour and they hadn't, I don't
think, seen the stake and the fangs dripping the blood in colour before . . .
Whereas they used to do it very well twenty years ago - you know, the Bela
Lugosis and the Boris Karloffs - 1 don't think they're as frightening as old
Christopher Lee. I think he scares people more than anybody else.” Asked if
he thought horror films “with plenty of blood and fear and horror” had
become a way of life now, Caneras pinched his exit-line from Blyth. "If the
Award signifies anything, and the amount of dollars we earn from overseas
countries has anything to do with it, they are a way of life everywhere - and
long may it continue."
In the meantime, telegrams of congratulation were pourit^ into Hammer
House, and singlii^ out James Carreras for much of
the praise. The first of them came from Earl
Mountbatten, who had heard the news in advance
from his own inside source: Vice-Admiral Ronald
Brockman, executive director of the Variety Club of
Great Britain. Anthony Crosland, President of the
Board of TVade, had followed him, but almost as quick
off the mark were Peter Cushing (“You must be very
proud and deservedly so"); BBFC Secretary John
Tfevelyan (“Great news”); several old army buddies
and fellow Variety Club members; a cross-section of
film industry colleagues and suppliers; Patrick
Williamson - UK managing director of Columbia
Pictures; Henry Halsted; BBC radio’s resident film
critic, Peter Haig; various bank, insurance company and pension fund man-
agers - including one from the Bank of America (“Feel proud to know you");
Hammer scriptwriter and former cameraman, Peter Bryan; and many others.
Some tried to sell their goods and services amid the applause, but most sim-
ply wanted to wish Hammer and its corporate head die very best of British.
The news was picked up in the US as well - brief articles appeared in the
Washington Evening Star and the industry’s trade paper, Variety. After the
Pinewood bash, one British trade journal - TTie Daily Cinema - would return
to the story in its issue of 5th June, and run a picture-spread on the Award
ceremony itself. 77ie Daily Mail’s Douglas Marlborough, who had attended,
would also cover the actual event. Beneath a photograph of Lee as Dracula
(with Risen From the Grave co-stars Barbara Ewing and Veronica Carlson by
his side), Marlborough was to give his readers a quick run-down of the
party, and end on a more pragmatic note than Henry Blyth had in The Times.
On the question of why Hammer made horror films, he would quote James
Carreras in reply; “For the money."
'Wth the famous cogs-and-coronet Award flag fluttering regally above
Hammer House, executives and officers of the company were soon adorning
themselves with all the approved ephemera - neckties, lapel-badges, cuff-
links - to advertise the fact that Hammer had come of age as an industrial
concern. In the case of the Queenls Award, however, the Royal Warrant was
not bestowed in perpetuity; the Grant of Appointment that allowed Award-
holders to display the crown-copyright emblem lapsed after five years from
the date on which the Award was announced.
Five years down the road from 20th April 1968, Sir James Caneras would
have sold the company with which Her Majesty the Queen had been so "gra-
ciously pleased” to his son, Michael - with his resignation as chairman and
chief executive officially taking effect from midnight on the last day of 1972.
By the time Michael Carreras came to assume control of Hammer Film
Productions, even the coveted blue flag of the Queen's Award to Industry
was not to be part of the fixtures and fittings for very long. -f
^^Whereas they used
to do It very well
twen^ years asfo —
you know, Bela
Lufi^sis and the
Boris Karloffs — I
don't think they're
as frightening as old
Christopher Lee.
I think he scares
people more than
anybody else."
— Jam&s Cameras
lO HAMMER HORROR
HAMMER HORROR
®RACULi BAS SISEN
FROMTlfiRAVE
arid crediis
Dracula
Christopher Lee
Monsignor [Ernst Muller]
Rupert Davies
Maria [Mullerl
Veronica Carlson
Zena
Barbara Ewing
Paul
Barry Andrews
Priest
Ewan Hooper
Anna [Mullerl
Marion Mathie
Student
John D Collins
Landlord
George A Cooper
Farmer
Chris Cunningham
Boy
Aforman Bacon
Girl in bell [Gizela Heinz| Carrie Baker *
Stuntman
Eddie Powell *
Music composed by
lames Bernard
Musical Supervisor
Philip Martell
Director of Photography
Arthur Grant BSC
Supervising Art Director
Bernard Robinson
Supervising Editor
fames Afeeds
Production Manager
Christopher Sutton
Editor
Spencer Reeve
Assistant Director
Dennis Robertson
Camera Operator
Moray Grant
Sound Recordist
Ken Rawhins
Sound Editor
Wilf^red Thompson
Continuity
Doris Martin
Make-up
Heather Aiurse
Rosemarie McDonald-Peattie
Hair Stylist
Wanda Kelley
Wardrobe Mistress
Jill Thompson
Special Effects
Frank George
Matte Artist
Peter Melrose
Construction Manager
Arthur Banks
Boom Operator
Harry Fairbairn *
Runner
Kevin Francis *
Screenplay by
Based on the character
John Elder ❖
created by
Bram Stoker
Produced by
Aida Young
Directed by
Freddie Francis
^ Uncrtfdited in finished print
<f Pseudonym for Anthony Hinds
Credit order from film print, then in order of
appearance. Names in square brackets are given
on-screen but uncredited.
A Hammer Film Production
Certificate X’
Duration 92 minutes, length 8,283 feet
Produced at Pinewood Studios. London. England
Technicolor
Released hy Warner Bros. - Seven Arts
Copyright @ MCMLXVIll Hammer Film Productions Limited
All rights reserved
DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE
^^OUNT ^'y^RACULA
“There is a girl . . . t/ie niece of the Monsignor . . . Bring her to me."
Providentially resurrected from a watery grave, Dracula finds himself
locked out of his own castle. Like any indignant home-owner, he sets off
in pursuit of the man responsible. Operating out of the coffin of young
Gi2ela Heinz, he’s content to leave the leg-work to two accomplices,
one of whom - Zena - becomes addicted to his embraces. But Zena is a
bit too brassy for Dracula’s tastes; the corruption of innocence is
what he’s really after.
' /!he
“I am not unacrfuainted with evil. The question is: what are we going to
do about itr
The Monsignor radiates old-world warmth and charm, together with
a sizeable dose of old-world intolerance when he finds himself dining
with youthful atheists. A firm believer in the hands-on approach to his
vocation, he's fearless and resourceful - exorcising Castle Dracula in a
spirit of “business as usual" and later wasting no time in pursuing the
vampire over the Kleinenberg rooftops. Only a handful of roof tiles
can stop him.
“I must go home. Mother wt/f be wondering where / am . . ."
Birthday girl Maria is unsure whether her relationship with Dracula
constitutes a dream or a nightmare. Though surrounded still by
childhood dolls - and acutely conscious of what her widowed mother
might think - she is far from being the child others take her for.
Until Dracula intervenes, that is, whereupon she sinks into a state
of white-robed catatonia and is barely heard from again.
^ ENA
“Does she kiss you like IhaD I'll bet she doesn't."
To the local students. Zena is the Cafe lohann’s star attraction. She’s
liberally endowed with boyfriends but, accommodatingly, has “always
got room for one more”. Maria makes sure she doesn't succeed in
accommodating Paul, however, so Zena is full of unrequited desire
when she runs into Dracula. But he, too, is more interested in Maria,
making Zena violently jealous. Dracula is not amused, and soon Zena
is not merely a discarded lover but a decidedly dead one.
^^^AUL
“I always have to go and tell the truth. Why can't I make a lot
of polite conversation like everybody else?"
According to his employer Max, Paul is “a good boy" who'll “go far".
But his search for the truth - and his commitment to sharing it with
others - poses^ serious threat to his progress. The Monsignor, for
instance, is outraged by Paul's claims to be an atheist. But. once he’s
been brought face to face with God's earthly opposite,
Paul subsequently ‘finds God' in record time.
' ^HE £^^riest
“Dear God - when shall we be free? When shall we be free of his evil?"
Slow, sinister and spiritless, the priest must be painfully aware of
the irony when he claims to have come to the Cafe Johann “on church
business”. Triggered by a traumatic experience in his own belfry, his
loss of faith reaches crisis point when he accidentally reanimates
Count Dracula. Uncomfortably cast thereafter as Dracula’s dog-collared
dogsbody, his every step seems an effort as he struggles against his
loudly protesting conscience.
HAMMER HORROR
/ ' urope, the early years of the twentieth century. A young bellringer
^ arrives at a church in a mountain village. As he tries the bell-rope, blood
^ drips onto his hands. Filled with trepidation, he climbs the stairs to the
% belfry. As the parish priest arrives at the church, the boy screams
% alarum and runs out In terror. The priest ventures up into the belfry and
discovers the body of a girl strung up inside the bell, gory puncture wounds in
her neck . . .
“A year has passed since Draculo, the perpetrator of these obscetje evils, wos
destroyed, and I, Ernst Muller, Monsignor of the Holy Catholic Church in the
province of Keinenburg, decided it was time f paid a visit to the little village in
the valley, to see that all was we/1 ..."
is forced by an outraged Monsignor to leave. Disgraced, he returns to the Cafe,
where he gets drunk on schnapps before Zena’s lustful gaze. Maria, meanwhile,
sneaks from her bedroom window and tiptoes across the Keinenburg rooftops.
Zena drags a bleary Paul back to his room where she makes a pass at him;
they are disturbed by Maria's arrival. Zena makes her exit as Maria puts Paul
to bed. As the disconsolate Zena makes her way home through the woods, she
finds herself pursued by the priest's horse and trap. She falls to the ground and
is confronted by the elegant black-clad figure of Count Dracula . . .
Morning. The priest drives into Keinenburg Just as Maria is treading her
way back home across the rooftops. Paul finds a scantily-clad Zena loitering in
the kitchens, clutching her hand to her neck. Later, the priest enters the Cafe
and asks to rent a room. As Paul escorts him upstairs, the cleric asks after the
Monsignor, and learns of the Monsignor's niece, Maria. Later still, the priest
leads Zena through the kitchens into a concealed cellar adjoining the basement
where he has installed the Count. Dracula commands Zena to bring Maria to
him. When Maria arrives at the Cafe, Zena takes her into the kitchens,
ambushes her. and drags the hapless girl into the vampire’s lair. Dracula's
designs upon Marla are scuppered when he hears Paul’s voice calling out to
her from the stairway beyond. Maria collapses and Zena hauls her back to the
kitchens where Paul finds her unconscious form. As they recover in the bar,
Dracula murders fena for failing him. The bloodsucker instructs the priest to
dispose of Zena’s corpse; he cremates her in the kitchen ovens.
The next day, Paul asks the priest to deliver a note to Maria at the
Monsignor’s house. Come nightfall, Maria is preparing for bed when Dracula
enters through her bedroom window, approaches, and feeds. A dazed Maria is
discovered in the morning. Finding puncture marks in her neck, and suspecting
the worst, the Monsignor researches vampire mythology through the night.
Dracula approaches Maria’s window once more: mesmerised, she opens it.
As he bares his fangs, the Monsignor enters and wards off the creature with a
crucifix. Dracula escapes across the rooftops; the Monsignor's pursuit of him
is halted when the errant priest brains him viciously. Semi-conscious, the
bloodied Monsignor staggers home and asks Anna to bring Paul to him.
By daybreak, he has given Paul a crash-course in vampire lore and has
explained the Dracula connection. Paul runs to the Johann, picking up the
priest: as they return, the Monsignor breathes his last.
Together, Paul and the priest festoon Maria’s room with garlic. But come
dusk, the tortured priest, finding himself unable to resist the vampire's will.
The village priest, with the assistance of the now muted
boy, reads Mass to an empty church before retiring to the
local inn. The Monsignor arrives at the church to find the
boy alone and skulking in the shadows, and heads to the
inn where he demands of the priest a reason why he has
said Mass to an absent congregation. The locals, it appears,
are still afraid of the shadow of Dracula’s castle, which
touches the church in the evenings. The Monslgnor
insists that the priest accompany him to the castle in the
mountains at dawn the next day, to prove that there is
nothing to fear. They meet at the church; the Monsignor
takes the church’s huge ceremonial Holy Cross on his back
as the pair set off into the mountains. Presently, the light
begins to fade. The priest refuses to venture any further,
and the Monsignor continues upward alone. Night falls.
As the Monsignor reads an exorcism outside the castle
doors, lightning crashes around him and a storm breaks.
Below, the startled priest takes a tumble down a rocky
outcrop, cracking both his head and the surface of a frozen
river. Beneath the ice lies the body of Count Dracula.
Blood from the unconscious priest’s wound drips onto
Dracula's lips. He stirs. The priest comes to to face the
terrifying form of the vampire Count, alive once more . . .
The Monsignor, having sealed the castle doors with the
Holy Cross, returns to the village inn, announcing that he
has destroyed the evil forever. Back at the castle, Dracula cowers from the
Cross, unable to pass his own threshold. "Who has done this thing?" he
demands of the priest. The Monsignor returns home to Keinenburg, where his
fussy widowed sister Anna is preparing a dinner party that night to celebrate
the birthday of her daughter, Maria, who will be bringing a student, Paul, to
meet them for the first time. Meanwhile, Dracula and the priest go to a
graveyard where the priest - bound to Dracula's will - exhumes a girl’s coffin
for the vampire to travel in by day.
At the Caf6 lohann in town, Paul, who works in the basement kitchens,
swaps pleasantries with jovial landlord Max and brassy barmaid Zena, who
clearly has designs on Paul. He is inveigled into a drinking game and ends up
with beer all over his best suit. Marla enters and drags the sodden Paul away
to the dinner at the Muller house. Miles away, the priest drives a horse and
trap frantically through the night. At the dinner, Paul reveals his atheism and
bludgeons Paul with a candlestick. He cannot remove Maria’s crucifix; Paul
recovers and forces the priest to lead him to the vampire's lair, where Paul
plunges a stake into the chest of the sleeping fiend. But the atheist Paul cannot
pray and thus finish the vampire off; Dracula removes the stake and rushes to
a rendezvous with the mesmerised Maria. They escape via the priest’s horse
and trap. Paul gives chase on horseback, and makes his way to the inn in the
village near Castle Dracula; the mute is the only villager prepared to show him
the way through the mountains. At the castle, Dracula forces Maria to remove
the Holy Cross from the gates and hurl it over the battlements. Paul arrives,
and launches himself at the vampire. In the scuffle, Dracula tumbles from the
battlements and is impaled upon the point of the Holy Cross, As the dying
creature’s influence recedes, the priest recites an exorcism. Blood streams
from the vampire’s eyes. The priest collapses. As the two lovers embrace,
Dracula crumbles away.
DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE CRAVE
n
The Daliy Cinema,
2m April 1968.
on the Amicus anthology Torture Garden.
Just prior to shooting, he indicated to the
German magazine F/im his hopes for the
forthcoming picture; "Christopher Lee has
set up an image for Dracula which can't be
changed anymore. Even outside the studio
he seems to be like Dracula. I'd like to give the figure more of a
dreamlike quality ... My ideal Dracula (I think of an actor in
Resnais’s Last Year in Marienbad) shouldn’t be of flesh and blood.’’
^ S cript
T he final draft screenplay of March 1968 would reach the screen
largely intact. Other than the usual minor alterations, some short
scenes would be completely excised: the funeral of the girl found
in the bell (“As the priest reads the burial service, his voice breaks
with emotion and he is scarce able to stumble through it. As the
camera examines the faces of the mourners, we see that, almost
without exception, their eyes automatically turn towards the
mountains”): a scene where the landlord peers out of the inn’s window
and speculates as to the fate of the Monsignor's mission (“They're lost
in the mist. We shan't see them again ... We should never have let
them go, either of them . . ."); and, following the Monsignor’s return,
a further scene where the villagers present him with "a beautifully
carved little crucifix on a chain" for his efforts ("If I may," says the*
Monsignor, "I shall give it to my young niece. Tomorrow is her
birthday. I know she will treasure it always.”). The sequence where
the priest exhumes the girl's coffin for Dracula's use was rather
different on the scripted page:
Dracula Subject” was first put into
jX development for the year 1968/69 at a
1 iHammer production meeting of Thursday
4th May 1967. As was common practice, a
pre-sales brochure had been prepared by August,
before writer Anthony Hinds had even completed
a plot synopsis! The film appears to have briefly
borne the provisional title Dracula’s Revenge, soon
abandoned for the rather more dramatic Dracula
Has Risen From the Grave. Initially budgeted at a
modest £165,000, Dracula Has Risen From the
Grave had been intended to be shot back-to-back
with two other forthcoming horrors, Frankenstein
Must Be Destroyed and The Claw. The latter, also
known as Brainstorm, was a long-standing Jimmy
Sangster screenplay in the mould of his earlier
psychothrillers Taste of Fear and Fonatic (indeed,
it was first planned to shoot as early as September
1964), The Claw would, however, be postponed
once more and the anticipated back-to-back
programme scrapped. Possibly in consequence,
£10,000 was later added to the budget of this
Dracula sequel. The production was funded
entirely by Warner Brothers and Seven Arts;
Hammer would receive a share of the film's
eventual profits. The deal was announced as part
of Hammer's forthcoming “£2,600,000" production
programme by James Carreras in mid-February
1968. (Quoted in The Daily Cinema on a constituent two-picture deal with
Seven Arts' Eliot Hyman (the other being When DlnosArs Ruled the Earth),
Carreras said, "He [Hyman] has been a partner of ours for many years. We
fixed to do the first Dracula they [Seven Arts] have had and it will go into
production on 18th March."
As late as February, Terence Fisher had been due to helm the project, thus
maintaining style with his earlier
Dracula, The Brides of Dracula and
Dracula Prince of Darkness] Anthony
Nelson Keys had been scheduled to
produce but had deferred to Aida Young
late the previous year. Fisher, however,
was knocked down by a car at around
this time and broke his right leg;
Freddie Francis replaced him and the
shoot appears to have been temporarily
delayed accordingly. Francis had previously made Paranoiac, Nightmare, The
Evil of Frankenstein and Hysteria for Hammer, and had recently completed work
As late as February,
Terence Fisher had
been due to helm the
project, thus
maintaining style with
his earlier Dracula,,
The Brigias of Dracula
and Dracula Rrince
of Darkness.
A fter making Dracula Prince of Darkness, Christopher Lee had maintained
his connection with Stoker’s Count by recording a double LP for America's
Stamford Records - "An adaptation, with music and sound, of the original,
classic story Drocula, portrayed by the internationally-famous actor
Christopher Lee, star of the motion picture Dracula Prince of Darkness".
Produced in London by Russ Jones and Roy Taylor, and over an hour long,
this recording, sadly, was never released. Only fifty 'promotional' copies are
believed to have been pressed.
With a gesture, Dracula indicates that the Priest should remove the lid
of the coffin. The Priest . . . starts to pull at the lid, but he is too weak
to have any effect ... the vampire pushes the Priest out of the way
and. taking the lid with both hands, rips it off with a splintering of
wood. Inside the coffin lies the decaying figure of the Young Girl, only
recognizable now by her long tresses . . . Through her heart, a wooden
stake has been driven. Dracula stares down at her and . . . becomes
shaken with savage, horrible laughter.
HAMMER HORROR
Above: Veronica Carlson and Barbara £wn| on set wW an off-duty Chnstopber Lee. One of the ale-house students can be
spotted in the bactground. Below: A posed puC//C(ly stiol of the belfry.
In 1968 it was another film sequel, and not a retelling of the original story,
that was proposed, despite the fact Lee was growing dissatisfied with Hammer’s
ideas. A contemporaneous statement to his fans (reprinted in US fanzine Liltfe
Shoppe of Horrors) read, “Over the past few weeks, there has been a great deal
of slightly hysterical and acrimonious discussions between me, my agent, James
Carreras, Tony Hinds, producer Aida Young and director Freddie Francis about
the next Drflcuffl, due to start on the 22nd of April 1968. If only 1 had a tape
recording of some of the conversa-
tions concerned, it would make hilar-
ious listening. To sum up, they have
committed themselves to the making
of this film, but they do not appear to
think that they are required to pay
me my current market price, which I
receive from all other film companies.
The arguments and appeals to my
better nature etc., have been
remarkable, but I have remained firm
and so has my agent . . .”
“When I first went onto the
movie," said Francis later, “we were
looking for somebody [else] to play
the part, and then suddenly out of
the blue Jimmy Carreras had met
with Chris, and suddenly Chris was
going to do it." Reportedly the
Colonel, a great personal friend of
Lee’s, would implore the star to make
this and other Dracuios by claiming
that the film in question was already
pre-sold to the US, and that if Lee were not to appear he’d be
putting others out of work.
Playing the Monsignor, Rupert Davies was best known for
his portrayal of Georges Simenon’s Parisian detective Maigret
in the early sixties BBC TV series of the same name (Simenon
once presented Davies with a book inscribed, "At last I have
found the perfect Maigret"). After the series’ conclusion in
1963, a typecast Davies would find work hard to come by.
He’d made earlier appearances in the BBC’s Quatermass //
and 1959's John Paul Jones alongside Peter Cushing. He
played Merlin in The Brides of Fu Manchu, encountering
Christopher Lee. and would do so again as the Vicar in Curse
of the Crimson Altar; Boris Karloff headed the cast of this
1968 Tigon production. He acted with both Lee and Brian
Donlevy in the 1967 thriller five Go/den Dragons. Tigon
featured him as John Lowes in Michael Reeves’s Wilchfinder
General, shot soon after the Dracufa. Lee and Vincent Price
were also in Davies’s next horror, 1969’s The Oblong Box;
Davies played Joshua Kemp. A mad-axeman-on-the-loose
tale. The Night Visitor, saw him through 1970. Driller-killer
Edmund Yates in Pete Walker’s 1974 slasher, frightmore,
proved to be his last film role. He died, aged 60, of cancer at
Guy’s Hospital in London on 22nd November 1976, Sadly, he
died intestate and his total savings of £21,908 went to the
taxman.
Peter Noble, London correspondent for The Hollywood
Reporter, noted young Veronica Carlson’s casting on
Wednesday 29th May with these words: "Newest sexpot
on the British scene is the 23-year-old beauty, Veronica
Carlson, who goes from playing a prostitute in MGM’s
The Only House in Town to playing a vampire in Hammer’s
Droculfl Has Risen From the Grave with Christopher Lee
doing a Bela Lugosi . . . Veronica, like Hammer’s previous
discoveries, Ursula Andress and Olinka Berova, is blonde,
photogenic and stacked . . . And under contract to Hammer
. . . (And engaged!)’’ Carlson had played just three minor
cinema roles to this date: extensive tabloid publicity on the
budding starlet drew her to the attention of James Carreras.
She was duly invited to read for the part of Maria; after the
audition the hopefuls retired to a restaurant with Freddie
Francis and Aida Young. A nervous Carlson suffered a
crisis of confidence, left early, and arrived home to find a
message informing her that she had an appointment for a
• fitting with a firm of theatrical couturiers.
Barry Andrews later appeared in Tigon’s lurid witchcraft
tale of 1970, Blood on Satan's Claw, in which he played
Ralph Gower alongside Taste The Blood of Dracula's Linda
Hayden. He was the Sergeant in the 1971 Peter Rogers-produced Joan
Colilns/James Booth psychothriller. Revenge, and could also be seen in I977’s
James Bond epic The Spy Who loved Me. John D Collins would work with
Francis and Carlson again, as one of the bright young things at the party in
1974’s The Ghoul. He became far better known as a silly-fool English airman in
wartime sitcom ’A/lo ’A/lo. And George A Cooper worked with Peter Cushing
and Meivyn Hayes on 1958’s Violent Ployground, on Val Guest’s Hell Is o City,
and as John in Francis’s earlier Nightmore.
^ ^ hooting
D racula Has Risen from the Grave
became the second Hammer film to
be mounted at Buckinghamshire's
Pinewood Studios, after A Challenge for
Robin Hood in 1967. Principal photography
for the Dracula took place between Monday
22nd April and Tuesday 4th June 1968; the
shoot ran two days over schedule. Location
work was completed in the adjoining Black
Park (the same location as the film’s
precursor. Dracula Prince of Darkness), and
at Box Hill, near Dorking, Surrey.
Unusually, director Francis elected to use
circular amber filters on many of the shots
featuring the Count, a technique with which
he’d previously experimented as Director of
DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE
Photography on 196l's The Innocents, a film based upon Henry James’s Gothic
chiller, The Turn of the Screw. “It took me back to crazy things I used to do in
my 16mm days," he later said.
The opening scene was unfortunate for actress Carrie
Baker, called upon to be strung up inside the bell: it's
said that she was forbidden from eating lunch with the
crew in her bloody make-up. She would be required to
be ejected from a coffin later. (Interestingly, this would
appear to indicate that she was playing one and the
same character, ie the ’GIZELA’ shown on the coffin ltd
as living between 1885 and 1905, thus dating the film's
main events as 1906.)
Christopher Lee was particularly unhappy with the scene In which Dracula
removes a freshly-hammered stake from his chest; “I didn’t like it. I fought it all
the time. 1 said, this is destroying the whole conception of the vampire, as he
may only be destroyed by a stake being
driven through the heart ... I did
register my strong dissent. I said 1
thought it was quite wrong, although
the reactions of the audience at the
time thought it was quite stunning."
For the climactic scenes where the
Count was impaled upon the tip of the
golden Holy Cross, Lee was compelled
to reel around the set with two halves
of the prop harnessed to his front and
back: "It wasn’t the easiest thing in the
world to do. I'd slipped a disc not too
long before.” For this Dracula, and in
all his subsequent appearances in the
part, Lee wore an exact duplicate of
the ring which Bela Lugosi had worn
as Universal's vampire Count. The ring
had been presented to Lee by
Forrest J Ackerman, editor of the
American Famous Monsters of Filmland
magazine.
For her part, Carlson appears
to have enjoyed the experience
thoroughly, bar two brief scenes she
found awkward. In the first, Barbara
Ewing threw her rather too forcefully at
Lee’s feet during the sequence in which
Maria is summoned to meet the Count
in the cellar. The scene she found most
difficult, however, “. . . was the love
scene, because 1 was embarrassed, and
yet, by Hammer standards, that was
mild ... 1 never wanted to take my
clothes off. lust undoing the back of
my dress was enough to finish me.
Freddie made me laugh about it. He
acted through it with me before I did it
with Barry Andrews, and made it all
seem . . . family.”
A celebratory lunch took place at
Pinewood on Wednesday 29th May
to mark the official presentation to
Hammer Film Productions of the
prestigious (Queen's Award to Industry.
The award was formally presented on
the steps of the Castle Dracula set;
Lee, Carlson and Ewing were joined by
Peter Cushing for a photocall.
Accomplished matte artist Peter
Melrose gave the film a tremendous
sense of scale with his "very ambitious"
glass paintings, most notably of
Dracula’s castle and the Keinenburg
rooftops. He used the same
architectural references as Bernard
Robinson; all of his work was created
in post-production at Shepperton
Studios. Recalling his labours some
twenty years later, he said, "Yes, it is
true to say that both the budget and
time schedule were extremely tight . . .
[Aida Young] kept describing the castles I painted as Gibbs castles - a Gibbs
castle being the well-known trademark of the toothpaste manufacturer! . . .
the shots were rushed through without any problems, the most difficult shot
being the one where a set of the castle was shot with
a 9.8mm lens (an extreme wide-angle lens] - making
all the lines of the architecture curved and difficult
to follow through into the painting.” Melrose's other
genre work includes Polanski’s comedic Dance of
the Vampires and TV movie Frankenstein - The
TVuc Story.
Composer James Bernard was not entirely happy
with his finished score. "When I did it, I wasn't very satisfied," he later wrote.
“I also remember thinking that a lot of bass got lost in the dubbing." Bernard
used sections from an arrangement of the Dies Irae ('The Day of Wrath', the
Catholic Mass for the dead) in the soundtrack .
Christopher Lee was
particularly unhappy
with the scene in
which Dracula removes
a freshly-hammered
stake from his chest.
HAMMER HORROR
U S distributors relied heavily upon
starlet Veronica Carlson's charms
in promoting the film; accordingly,
the trailer featured her character
prominently. Ran the voiceover;
"No coffin could ever hold him! No
door could ever bar his way! He is
bach froin the dead! Dracula has
risen from the grave!
"Dracula, the most feared name
in any language! The most feared
being ever to haunt the living!
"Christopher Lee, Rupert
Davies, Veronica Carlson -
Hammer’s new star discovery,
Dracula’s most beautiful victim!
"Dracula has risen from the
grave! To resist him is useless! To
rise against him is futile! To know
him is eternal damnation!”
iJii.liJiji,;! !l;ij
fliii
T he film was previewed at
Hammer’s regular West End
home, the New Victoria, on
Tuesday 5th November 1968 and
premiered there on the Thursday
thereafter. Veronica Carlson, having
previously achieved a national
diploma in art, had made beautiful
line sketches of Christopher Lee and
Barry Andrews; the Lee illustration
was used in the press book alongside
a photograph of Lee sitting for the
multi-talented actress. A vast array of
standees and posters were made
available to cinema managers to
promote the film. All sorts of silly
stunts were suggested by distributors
Warner-Pathe; "One of the least
costly but certainly one of the most
effective is to transform all the lighting In
the vestibule, corridors and staircases
into green - this conveys the eerie effect
which is important to this film."
Suggested enticing display catchlines
included: “ENGULFS YOU IN A LIMBO
OF TERROR!"; “HARROWING
FERMENT OF FEAR"; and, "YOU MAY
LOATHE IT - YOU WON'T DARE
LEAVE IT",
On 30th November, Kine Weekly noted;
“All records were broken by ‘Dracula Has
Risen From the Grave’ on the first day of
its ABC release. The film set a new circuit
record by taking more money at the
box-office on
ADVERTISING ' PUBUCITY ' ACCESSORIES ' EXPLOITA
a Sunday (of
all days!] than
ever before
. . . lit] also
enjoyed
excellent
business at the New Victoria, the ABCs at Fulham Road and Edgware Road, and on its
pre-release dates.” Also that week, Robert Clark. ABC's chief executive, announced
that Hammer had “another 'Dracula' subject" in pre-production.
Rated ‘G’ (’General Audience’) the film did the American circuits from 26th March
1969 as the top half of a double bill with Chubosco, a melodrama of the tuna fishing
industry starring Susan Taste of Fear Strasberg. Dracula Has Risen From the Grave
would reap substantial box-office receipts across the Atlantic, paving the way,
inevitably, for a further sequel. The
film would be retitled Dracula et les
Femmes (Dracula and the Women) for
the French market.
Sections of the musical score were
included on a French album, Musiques
de Films d'Horreur el de Catastrophes,
re-recorded by Geoff Love and his
Orchestra, and on Silva Screen
Records’ Music from the Hammer Films,
recorded by The Phllharmonia
Orchestra and conducted by Neil
Richardson.
The film was first released on VHS
by Warner Home Video (PES 1 1069)
in February 1989, and is scheduled for
re-release by the same company on
14th August 1995.
Top righi: The film's Belgian poster.
Right: A Spanish version.
Left: Artist Tom Chantrell's 'raised fist' poster
was reproduced on the cover of the British
press booh. Tfte main part of the picture was.
incredibly, a customised se/f-portrait and not
a picture of Christopher Lee at ail.
I CHRISTOPHER I £E wvt [«S
uMw, a.],. 1
DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE CRAVE
ain't
witat tiwo^ usati tar
ba "
T he newspapers were pretty unananimous when it
came to assessing this latest vampire tale;
"... a horror film that hasn’t even got the
negative quality of being horrible," wrote Nina
Hibbin of The Morning Star on 9th November. A day
previously, The Guardian had pithily remarked:
". . . he comes to a properly gory end, if you can be
bothered to wait.” “MONSTER DISAPPOINTMENT"
blathered Dick Richards (yes, really) of The Sun:
Isn’t It time that dear old Dracula was pensioned off?
In Dracula Has Risen From the Grave . . . he’s a very
jaded old ghoul . . . apart from plunging his choppers
into the necks of a couple of pretty girls, he creates
precious few thrills in this disappointment lor cinema
horror fans. He comes to another sticky end Impaled on
a bloody Holy Cross. Can this really be the end?
Verdict: Fangs ain't what they used ter be.
Surprisingly, Britain's film magazines were
rather more enthusiastic. December's Monthly Film
Bulletin noted director Francis’s “pleasing colour
compositions," and singled out for praise "Barbara
Ewing as the jealous Zena, who dies with an
expression of triumphant and satisfied lust frozen
on her face." films and Filming's David Hutchison
preferred newcomer Francis’s approach to Terence
Fisher's:
... the film is no longer a series of climaxes but is
conceived as a whole and has much more of a
cumulative effect , . . Francis, who used to be one of
Britain’s best lighting cameramen before turning to
direction, has attempted some Interesting but not
completely successful experiments with filters to
create an unreal and menacing atmosphere. Dracula's
first appearance Is heralded by the use of sickly yellow
filters at the sides of the frame which, as the film
progresses, become deeper In tone until red dominates
. . . Effective use
f ivds nfrcmt’ly ■iucccssfuf. All i tried to do
iv/f/i (/iflf u’flj; fo sorf of'/juf it Mf of « /ovc
rnfcrt’sf i;i rf, mo5f of ivhic/i ivos cuf oof iv/ii/t i
ivos envoy. Bof iv/u’f/ier f/?of helped it or not I
don't know. IVc fioef ofr alrcmi’fy preffy gi>/ in if.
/ con'l ft’// you why it ivos 5o successful."
Freddie Francis - from The Films of Freddie Francis, spring 1988
t's all very ivWf bcirtg in o croivtf of CA-fros huf
_ iv/n’ij you /luve fo sfond up oiid he couiifed and
then see the people eye-to-eye that vou've admired
and respeefed for so long ond you hnoiv fhuf
they've earned fheir position . . . hoiv could they
ever fhinfc thof I'd earned the right to be Iheref
But ive discussed our different roles and the
director discussed what ivus expected from us.
And they couldn’t have been kinder or more gentle.
I ivas really surprised. It's like a cameraderie. vou
hnoiv. you’re all in the same hoot. In retrospect I
think they must have picked up on my anxiety and
my eogerness to do the right thing."
Veronica Carlson ~ from Veronica Carlson:
An Illustrated Memento, 1993
hen Hammer films received the Queen’s
. . Aivard . . . the lord Lieufenunf of
Buchinghamshire . . . come doivn and presented
this aivard . . . and then after that they came on
the set and they come ot a rather violent moment
when I ivas croshing about in the rocks mth this
cross through me. pouring blood and with those
awful contact lenses in my eyes . . . Well, after
the Lord Lieutenant and his wife, who I'm sure
bad never been in a studio in their lives, had been
watching all this ivithout ony expression at all on
their faces (I didn't dare look in their direction),
there was a long, long silence and then, very
clearly, and very penefratinglv, he turned to his
ivife and be said, 'You know, my dear, that man
is a member of my club.”'
Christopher Lee - quoted in Little Shoppe of Horrors # 4,
April 1978
of contrast is made in the scenes In which Dracula does not
appear, they are drained of warm colours and Intensify the
feeling of guilt and fear inherent In the plot , , ,
Hutchison was, neverlheless, moved to decry other
aspects of a production “marred by continuity errors,
badly-matched studio and location work . . . [and) a
shot of Dracula’s reflection which contradicts the
basic vampire legend.”
“John Elder’s flaccid script seems irretrievably
bound to available sets," said John Mahoney in
The Hollywood Reporter's edition of Boxing Day,
1968. Other American journalists were in similar
accord, “The story’s slight, the horror and the
bloodcurdling essential to these pix is minimal and
even Dracula himself appears bored at being
resurrected once again.” wrote Variety’s ’Rich’ on
20th November. “If you are handling a stale idea you
must either freshen it up or bury it," he concluded.
The New York Times was downright rude on 27th
March the next year: “DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM
THE GRAVE. Yes, again. And judging by this junky
British film - asplatter with catchup or paint or
whatever, to simulate the Count’s favorite color - he
can descend again."
Charming . . .
HAMMER HORROR
CSritiq,
ue^
P erhaps (he most telling
moment in Dracufo Has
K/sen from the Grave
comes when the Count first
visits Maria in her bedroom.
After prolonged nuzzling, he
finally fastens upon her
throat and the camera pulls
•away to show her hand
clutching orgasmically at a
doll, which she convulsively
flings to the floor. If this
moment is intended to
convey that, in making love
with a walking corpse, Maria
graduates from girl to woman
-and it's hard to see what
else it could be intended to
convey - then it’s completely
illogical, for we know already
that Maria is not only
sexually mature but sexually
active. It’s put in purely
for effect, for a moment’s
outrageousness, and is
. typical of the film as a whole. Dracufa Has Risen From the Grave is a box
of tricks, but a box so ravishingly decorated - and the tricks so wildly
over-the-top - that it's hard to resist.
In a film full of showy moments, one of the showiest comes when Paul
enlists the Priest’s aid in staking Dracula, whereupon the vampire pulls the
stake from his own chest because they’ve failed to utter the appropriate
prayers. This scene, as Christopher Lee loudly protested, violates vampire
lore and seems to have been put in
Ormcuim Hms Ris^n
From tho Grmvo Is a
box of tricks, but a
box so ravIshlriKly
decoratsd — and
tho tricks so wildly
ovsr-ttie-top that
It's hard to resist.
going to the treacherous padre for assistance (the irony of which is so strong it
actually kills the ailing Monsignor); and Dracula himself given a mock-crucifix-
ion at the fade-out. All in all, Hinds wastes no opportunity to underline the
quasi-Biblical bravura of the film’s title.
Freddie Francis smothers the whole
Lee's Dracula suffers,
nonetheless, from
Hammer^ continuing
Inability to find
anything worthwhile
for him to do.
thing in a cloying visual splendour
(and a great many luridly coloured
camera filters) that results in some
of the most atmospheric moments
Hammer ever achieved. The priest’s
grisly appropriation of a coffin from the
local graveyard; Dracula’s maniacal lashing of steaming horses, accompanied
first by the lapsed cleric and later by the white-robed maiden; Maria’s fairy-
tale odyssey through the woods in the wake of the black-clad vampire - ali
these are splendidly Gothic and, despite being underscored by the tainted
romanticism of James Bernard’s music, seem strangely reminiscent ot silent
horror films.
Above all, there is the lustrous eroticism of the bedroom scenes and the
miasmic unpleasantness of the Cafe Johann’s cellar. In one brief cut-away as
Zena goes in search of Maria, Dracula stands alone and in silhouette beside
his coffin, the misergble drip-drip of the cellar his only accompaniment.
A slight turn of his head, like a watchful bird of prey, communicates all the
grim isolation and ‘otherness’ with which Christopher Lee habitually
invested the character.
As thrlllingly atavistic as ever, and making the most of the 52 words he’s
required to utter, Lee's Dracula suffers, nonetheless, from Hammer’s continuing
inability to find anything worthwhile for him to do. (In sharp contrast to
Frankenstein, from whom Hammer wrung a number of ingenious scenarios.)
The films seem increasingly
to revolve around the
plot mechanics of his
reincarnation and subsequent
destruction, and without Van
Helsing around to provide a
strong antagonist, Dracula
seems more and more
accident prone. (And here,
not only his death but even
his resurrection come about
entirely by accident.)
When he writhes impotently
astride the impaling crucifix
and bleeds forlorn, stigmatic
tears, we know we’re
watching one of Hammer’s
most spectacular climactic
scenes, but we may also
realise that Dracula Has
Risen From the Grave is
rather less than the sum of
its parts - however dazzlingly
effective those parts may be.
purely for its visceral impact.
But what an impact!
On closer examination, though,
the scene also serves a purpose,
since it draws a line under a whole
series of religious ironies with which
Anthony Hinds has impishly
peppered his screenplay. The film
begins when Dracula leaves an
exsanguinated victim in the belfry of the local church, though how he
managed to do this on hallowed ground is left to our imagination. With the
house of God thus defiled, the Monsignor ironically proceeds to ‘desecrate’
the house of the Devil by fixing a cross to the door. Later we have an erring
priest shifting his allegiance to the risen Anti-Christ; a 'fallen woman’ given a
twisted sort of martyrdom when she’s consigned to the flames; an atheist hero
DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE CRAVE
Cl.
dSStC
ce^ne
t
f
I
I
I
were you not there in church this
morning?
FARMER; It’s the shadow, sir.
MONSIGNOR: Shadow?
the shadow,
sir ...”
Dracula Has Risen From the Grave
( 1968 }
Screenplay by lohn Elder
M onsignor Ernst Muller
(Rupert Davies) pays a visit
to a once-troubled church in his
province - only to discover that
the local folk will no longer attend
Mass. In the village inn, he
confronts the locals and demands
to know the reason why. The
landlord (George A Cooper) and a
farmer (Chris Cunningham) have
the answer . . .
MONSIGNOR: Why was the
church empty? Well?
FARMER: The shadow of his
castle, sir.
LANDLORD: It touches the church.
FARMER: In the evenings, it
touches it.
MONSIGNOR: Whose castle? Count
Dracula? Is that who you mean?
Why do you not speak his name?
He cannot harm you anymore. He is
destroyefl, is he not? And he is dead.
Is he dead, or not?
compiled by
.Alan Barnes - Tlie Sion'. In Prot/uclion.
The Script, Casting, Shooting, On Release. Comment
and Classic Scene
lonathan Rigbv - The Choroclers and Critique
i
LANDLORD; I think you know.
Monsignor.
MONSIGNOR: No, I do not know.
I know that your church was once
vilely desecrated, but the perpetrator
of that ghastly deed was destroyed
some twelve months ago. Is that not
so? Was he not sent to his doom in
the waters of your mountains?
And was he not, therefore, destroyed
forever? Is that not so? Then why
LANDLORD: Yes, he is dead.
MONSIGNOR: Well . . ,
FARMER: But the evil is still there.
You can feel it in his shadow, even
in the church.
MONSIGNOR; There is no evil
in the house of God! Landlord,
I wish to talk to my priest.
In private ... 4*
HAMMER HORROR
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is.
Sir li'hn Rowan
Lynn Xulnn
Sieve llarri>
Val \0l3n
liropcr
Mike Orme
Terry
Rik
Kale
(iirl in Ihe flal
(ieorgie
Sandy
(iirl in Hie liain
Claire
Miirluary AlteniLinl
(tirl at the party
Peter Cu^/iini;
Sue Lloyd
Voil Trei’urlhort
Krite (I'Mitro
DiJviil Itidjie
Anthony lioolh
IVendy l'iJin(il.s
Billy .ilurruy
i'onesiu lloivord
Inn U'alers
Phillip Alonikuin
.llexiindro tione
I'ltlerie \'iin (W
Piuno Asliley
I'iilof Bortni;
Shirley STel/iu;
Made on Iflealiun anti at
l<levn)rth Sliidios I.ondon England
bv Titan Tilm Dislrihulors Ltd.
A Columbia Pictures I’resentalion
Cerlifieale 'X'
lenj-lh 8,187 feet
Puratinn ^1 minutes
Screenplav by
Director of I’botiyitraphy
Assistant Director
Makeup
Sound Supervisor
Caslinj; Director
Production Designed by
Special effects
Editor
Music Composed and
Coiulucled by
In Charge of Production
Piiuluced by
Directed by
Donuld (Hid Dercl; ford (or Dorok
Produciion.s Lid.
Pelcr W'lvbriHilt BSC
Ken .Softley
John tt'fioroion
Cyril Coliiek'
/(tmes l.iggul
Bruce (Ir/nies
.Miihiiel AIhrechl.son
Don Deocon
Bill Vlifjul’fie
Knhcrl .Sterne
Peter .Veivhrook
Roherl llurlford-ilovi.s
The Story
J ohn Rowan, a pioneering plastic
surgeon, is woken by a phone call
from his model girlfriend Lynn. She
insists he keep his promise to attend
a party held by her photographer,
Mike. He cannot resist her.
The party is wild and an
overwhelmed John asks Lynn if they
can leave. Lynn is reluctant, and
John and Mike scuffle. During the
argument, an arc-light falls on Lynn, severely burning one side of her face.
Lynn becomes suicidally depressed and a guilty John grows obsessed with
finding a way to restore her beauty. Using dead tissue from a car accident
victim, and assisted by Val, Lynn’s sister, he performs a successful operation
with the aid of laser surgery. His success is short-lived, however, so he kills
and decapitates a prostitute for the living tissue he needs.
The couple go away to their seaside cottage where, once again, Lynn’s
tissue starts to corrode. They give refuge to an apparently homeless girl.
Terry - who is actually part of a beatnik gang looking for people to rob. John
is reluctant to kill again but the Increasingly obsessed Lynn insists. Terry
leaves in the night so John kills and decapitates a woman on a train.
Meanwhile. Val and her lover Steve - one of John’s fellow surgeons - come
to realise that John is the killer and plan to journey to the cottage.
Whilst preparing for the
next restorative operation,
John is interrupted by the
returning Terry, who Is chased
along the beach by Lynn and
John and also killed. The gang
for whom she was the scout
burst into the house expecting
to find her there. They keep
John and Lynn captive and
Lynn is forced to show Terry’s
husband where his wife is.
She lures him to a steep cliff
and pushes him over it. One
of the gang members finds a
decapitated head in the fridge
and the leader demands that
John tells him what is going
on. In the confusion, the laser
is set off, killing Lynn, the
gang leader, Val, Steve and
finally John.
John Rowan comes to
consciousness at a party. It is
wild and he wants to leave . . .
Dadi^roand
A fter the end of the second world war, Robert Hartford-Davis worked in a
variety of capacities at numerous British studios before making his own
short films and episodes of TV shows like Police Surgeon. In mid-1962 he
won the contract to make films for Compton-Cameo, who ran profitable
cinema clubs specialising in risque films and now wanted to branch out into
film production. So successful were the 1963 pictures Thof Kind of Girl
(which Hartford-Davis produced), and The Yellow Teddybears (which he
produced and directed), that a year later he was appointed ‘executive in
charge of all production'.
Director of Photography on these films was Peter Newbrook, who had
previously worked on such prestigious pictures as The Sound Barrier,
Lawrence of Arabia and In The Cool of the Day. In August 1964,
Hartford-Davis and Newbrook formed Titan Productions, immediately making
the incredible pop musical, Gonks Go Beot. Their biggest budgeted film
followed in 1966: The Sandwich Man was a comedy produced with money
from the National Film Finance Corporation, a funding organisation set up to
initiate new independent British film productions. Not even cameos from
numerous top British comic stars could prevent it from being only a modest
success, and with none of the other NFFC -funded films succeeding, Titan had
to look elsewhere for capital. It came in January 1967 from independent
American company, Oakshire Films, with whom Titan signed to make three
films, all to be distributed through Columbia. The first two announced - The
Mask of Innocence, a story of a child’s obsessive love for her father, and We,
the Guilty, concerning the
nationwide pursuit of two
prison escapees - both
went unmade. The third
was Corruption.
Hartford-Davis came up
with the original idea and
brought in Donald and
Derek Ford to write the
script. The Fords had
written all of Hartford-
Davis's Compton-Cameo
releases, and had stayed
with the company to author
the classic Sherlock Holmes
versus Jack the Ripper film,
A Study in Terror.
Peter Cushing was the
obvious choice for the
top-billed part in any
British horror film.
Discussing Corruption with
Eamonn Andrews on
television, he remarked
that he was looking forward
to his next picture: a horror
film in modern dress, for a change. Receiving equal billing was Sue Lloyd,
who had previously appeared as Michael Caine's girlfriend In The fpcress file
and had a recurring role in The Baron.
Hartford-Davis would be so impressed
with her work on Corruption that he’d
present her with an antique cup
inscribed, "To my actress of the year,
from your corrupted director." At the
end of shooting, Cushing presented her
with a special script holder. "I did
rather well out of that film!” she now
laughs. Kate O’Mara, a relative
newcomer to film, was cast as Lynn's
sister, and Anthony Booth - then popular as Alf Garnett’s son-in-law in
Till Death Us Do Part - played groovy photographer Mike.
When making movies, Hartford-Davis apparently considered actor David
Hartford-Davis would
be so Impressed with
Sue Lloyd's work on
Corrug»Uon that he'd
present her with an
antique cup Inscribed,
''To my actress of the
year, from your
comapted director."
teft; John Rowan (Peter Cushing} brutally murders a prostitute (Jan Waters} in his
kicteasingly desperate attempts to cheat science. This stili is taken from the British
wrsion of the film. In certain overseas versions the prostitute ifas semrnaiteO.
HAMMER HORROR 35
Peter Cus/i/ng
and Robert
Hartford-Davis
dism$ surgical
procedure outside
islemrtfi Studios
in summer 1967.
Lodge his "lucky charm";
a part, therefore, had to be
found for him. Lodge
remembers: "1 said. 'There’s
nothing in here for me,’ He
said, 'There's got to be
something. I tell you what,
what about one of the
hippies?’ I said, ‘They’re kids!'
- and I was well into my
forties. He said, ‘We’ll make
one of them a big idiot with
the mental age of about 12.
He's retarded.’ ’’ So was born
Groper, the strongman of
Terry’s beatnik gang, blindly
obedient to leader Georgie.
Saving money where they
could. Titan used Isleworth
Studios in south-west London,
not far from Hartford-Davis’s
home. Isleworth was built in
1914 and soon became one of
the major British silent
studios, but fell from favour with the advent of sound. In the
year prior to the Corruption shoot, only one other film had
been made there.
The film’s four-week schedule commenced on 10th July 1967,
and most scenes were completed quickly. One exception was the
discovery of the head in the fridge by Sandy, a female gang member.
Actress Alexandra Dane was so shocked by the sight of an
apparently decapitated head that she became quite distressed^n the
first take. The crewmen who had the job of stuffing the head with
various offals referred to
it as ‘the laughing
Japanese shot'. Far East
audiences enjoyed a lot of
gore, apparently.
The finale - in which
the laser disposes of
most of the leading
characters - was achieved
by stringing up lengths of wire around the set, which were then lit,
and burned brightly where the laser was supposedly striking. Sue
Lloyd remembers that the actors had to be wary of their positions if
they were to avoid being injured.
Care also had to be taken in the scene in which Groper holds a
brandy glass over Lynn's mouth in order to get information out of
Groper (David Lodge) attacks Rowan. Lodge later reused the pebblelensed glasses in The Railway Children,
John; David Lodge remembers being cautious to
leave a small gap so she could still take in air.
Location shooting took place at Seaford,
between London and Brighton. The scene
where Lynn lures Terry's husband, Rik, to the
edge of the cliff and forces him over was
especially arduous for Sue Lloyd: “I suffer from
terrible vertigo and that cliff was a sheer drop.
I couldn’t do it. I just froze and in the end they
had to get a double in. If you look, you never
see my face when she pushes him off."
The murder in the train was also shot on
location. This disturbing sequence was shot by
Newbrook through a fish-eye lens, lending it a
delirious quality. Another murder - that of the
prostitute in the flat - was shot twice, in the
version seen in Scandanavia, South America,
and the Far East, a bare-breasted jan Waters is
attacked quite graphically by a manic Peter
Cushing. Again, Newbrook used a distorting
fish-eye lens in the scene.
Over a year after its completion, the film
premiered at London's Metropole on 21st
November 1968, but was replaced after a week
by Corry On Up the Khyber. On general release
from 8ih December. Corruption was paired with
an Alex Cord spaghetti western.
Dead Or Alive.
Corruption received
patronising reviews which
concentrated mainly on the
film’s violent sequences. "It is
all blatantly sensational and
sick . . . made especially for a
bloodthirsty audience”,
commented Kfnc Weekly.
Sneered Monthly film Bulletin;
“The elements of suspense
derive not from any subtly
created mood or logical
sequence of monstrosities but
from the bludgeoning emphasis
on physically unpleasant
details.”
David Lodge recalls going to
see an early screening of
Corruption with Peter Cushing
and them both chuckling all the
way through. Cushing later
remarked: "I felt it was a great
idea, but the only thing I felt
Actress Alexandra
Dane was so sdiocked
by the sisht of an
appa r en tl y decapitated
head ttiat she became
quite distressed on the
first take.
'Peter Cushing was divine, ' remembers Sue Lloyd.
36 HAMMER HORROR
about the picture was that it was repetitive within
itself - and it had to be, 1 suppose, because of
what the story was about , . . I think with a little
more time it could have been more subtle, but
even so it was an incredible success in America.”
Corruption is still fondly remembered by those
who saw it on its initial release but - possibly
because of its reputation as a violent film - it has
not been transmitted on television since 1977 or
ever released on video in this country.
After filming ended, Peter Cushing went
immediately into The Blood Beast Terror (then
known as The Deal/isheod Vampire) at Goldhawk
Studios. Sue Lloyd eventually became a regular
on the television soap opera Crossroads, and has
recently recreated her fpcress File role in a new
Harry Palmer film shot in Russia. David Lodge
continued to appear in many British films (in The
Railway Children, his Bandmaster can be seen
wearing Groper's pebble-lensed spectacles).
After two more movies, the partnership of
Hartford-Davis and Newfarook broke up.
Newbrook formed Glendale Productions,
responsible for both Crucible of Terror and The
Asphyx. Robert Hartford-Davis formed World Arts
and made two further pictures in England before
relocating to Hollywood for
two more, and some
television. In 1977, he was
just starting work on the TV
movie Murder at Peyton Place
when he died, aged 54, of a
massive heart attack.
Critipe
R obert Hartford-Davis’s
films may be many things,
but they are never boring.
When he made a pop musical,
it was not a showcase for a
group or singer depicting their
efforts to put on a show at a
holiday camp or such like, but
the bizarre Gonfts Go Beat, in
which Earth is seperated into
Beatland and Balladisle. His
comedy, The Sandwich Man,
features not only Michael
Bentine as the central character, but also familiar faces such as Norman
Wisdom, Terry-Thomas, Harry H Corbett and Bernard Cribbins in cameo
appearances as the characters Bentine encounters on the streets of London.
When he came to make a horror picture, Hartford-Davis used a multitude
of devices. Ostensibly a rip-off of Eyes Without a Face - with the same theme
of a man trying to restore his scarred love's beauty - Hartford-Davis replaced
Franju's lyricism with a lively grand guignol style harking back to Tod
Slaughter, and spiced up with gruesome imagery. On top of this, he added
layers of science-fiction (the laser surgery angle), teenage exploitation
(Terry and her beatnik gang), and a supernatural twist ending borrowed from
Dead of Night.
The film provides Peter Cushing with one of his most startling roles.
Though John Rowan is, at first, similarly dedicated to his pursuit, he exhibits
a mania absent from the cold procedures of Victor Frankenstein. The
sequences in which Rowan murders his victims show a wild frenzy in the
killing, whereas murder for the Baron would only ever be a means to an end.
Frankenstein is far more dogged. He would never experience the sickened
remorse that Rowan feels as he is emotionally blackmailed by his wife into
killing again.
The role of Lynn Rowan is similarly unusual. Although bad girls were
already a staple of British horror films, they were rarely so calculating.
Throughout the film she becomes ever more obsessed and focused.
Archetypally, the bad girl is one who has lost all control, and is always
submissive to a male
master. Here, however, it
is Lynn who wields power.
Such female dominance is
not only extraordinary in
a British horror film, it is
extraordinary in any British
film of the period.
The title. Corruption -
perhaps derived from
Polanski’s Rcpu/sion-
reflects the film. Not only
is Lynn's face corrupted,
but so are her and John's
personalities. Indeed, most
of the people they
encounter turn out to
be corrupt in some way;
there are hardly any
sympathetic characters in
the film. The hero and
heroine, Steve (Rowan's
fellow surgeon) and Val
(Lynn’s sister), exist to one
side of the story. They are
never menaced, and serve merely to comment upon the main action. Hammer
might have shown Steve and Val running out of the house at the end and
looking over their shoulders as the laser runs amok; in Corruption they are
killed along with the rest of the cast.
Even little scenes such as
Rowan’s comical conversation
with Kate at the party are
effective; those who have endured
ham-fisted incidental scenes in
otherwise fine films (for instance.
The Sorcerera, or Scream and
Scream Again) will appreciate
this as an achievement. Only Bill
McGuffie's music serves as an
occasional distraction; his score is ideally suited to the delirious murder
sequences, but when laid over some of the early conversation scenes, his
unsympathetic muzak nearly kills them.
Corruption (albeit probably unknowingly) is a forerunner to a strand of
British horror production that encompasses Tigon's modern-dress chillers,
Freddie Francis's Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly, Victors Ritelis's The
Corpse, the films of Pete Walker, and many other UK horrors of the 1970s.
Despite sharing with these films a particular British seediness. Corruption
has a giddy euphoria which marks it out as one of a kind.
Not only Is Lynn’s
faoe Gomi|iteci, but
so are her and John’s
personalities. Indeed,
most of the people
they encounter turn
out to be corrupt in
some way.
Left: Steve ffioe/
rreverthan) admires
trte sfiorW/ved fruits
of John's success.
Below: Rowan's
treatment is
unsuccessful and
Lynn's disfigurement
reasserts itself.
HAMMER HORROR 37
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
Columbia Thstar
Rental release - out now
U nleashed onto video at last, a monster of a film with a monster
as its subject. Or so the theory goes, but then that very ambig-
uity as to who is the greater monster - the Creature or his creator -
has always been one of the most salient themes within Mary
Shelley's visionary source novel.
Quite whether this visionary work survives Kenneth Branagh's
much-touted production is open to debate: it is certainly a
well-crafted film with some startling moments and yet, as Victor
Frankenstein, our Ken narrowly fails to convince the viewer. He may
be embarking upon a journey of scientific discovery but, ultimately,
he falls short of taking the audience with him.
From the moment that lightning strikes nearby just as his mother
Caroline (Cherie Lunghi) dies in childbirth, Victor’s destiny is con-
firmed. The symbolic birth of his baby brother, counterpointed by the
death of his mother, acts as a chilling precursor to Victor’s own
experiments: he creates ‘life’, but only at the expense of other lives
and. perhaps, his own soul. His grieving
at her graveside - "Oh mother, you
should never have died, no one ever
needs to die” - compels him to pursue
his own esoteric studies at Ingolstadt
University under the watchful guidance
of Professor Waldman (lohn Cleese),
whose own abrupt murder eventually
supplies Victor with raw material: a
brain for his creation. Duly formed, the Creature (Robert De Niro) is
rejected by his creator, and seeks sanctuary from the human race.
Having observed Victor’s happiness with his bride Elizabeth (Helena
Bonham Carter), the Creature then returns to persuade Victor to
build him a mate.
Unfortunately, Branagh's dishevelled appearance and rather
overblown dramatic outbursts singularly fail to evoke the necessary
feeling that we are witnessing a man obsessed, and provide a stark
contrast to the understated yet consummately more effective portray-
al by Peter Cushing in the Hammer series. Likewise, although De
Niro delivers a powerful performance as the outcast creature, he
cannot quite match Boris Karloff’s
pathos-laden characterisation. The
overall ambience is also compromised
on occasions by Branagh's ostenta-
tious. ever-circling camera work.
In defence of the film, however,
there’s no denying Branagh’s appreci-
ation and interpretation of certain
key aspects of Shelley’s novel, hither-
to neglected in other versions. He
wisely dispenses with the cliched
array of laboratory accoutrements,
preferring instead to inject realism
into the creation sequence - a
hugely impressive scene where
electrified eels course through
amniotic fluid before sparking the
Creature’s body into life, its invigo-
ration indicated by a resounding
rap of the hand upon the glass
window of the birthing container
which shatters an eerie silence. As the Creature escapes
its ’incubator', its cold grey flesh crudely visible, and, propped up by
its creator, slides drunkenly around in a morass of ‘after-birth’ liquid,
Branagh expertly roots the creation in the realism of human child-
birth rather than the surrealism of science-fantasy.
Frankenstein's later meeting with his creation in the polar ‘sea of
ice' is equally impressive, both men sliding rollercoaster-style
through ice tunnels before entering a frozen grotto where the
Creature sets out its own agenda. "For the sympathy of one human
being I would make peace with all.” it announces, warning Victor:
“If you deny me my wedding night. I will be with you on yours,”
This ominous threat is indeed honoured during the bravura
sequences where Elizabeth is bloodily dispatched, only to be revived
by a forlorn Victor in his customary fashion - as a patchwork of
corpses beautiful only in the Creature's stitched-on eyes. Not content
with one dramatic death scene, Elizabeth is in fact granted two as
the pace quickens and the film moves towards its effective grand
guignol denouement.
Branagh also manages to evoke the spirit and expressionism of
the Universal classics, with the towering walls of Ingolstadt looming
imperiously, and the spacious interiors of the Frankenstein family
home. The casting is also superb, with an unrecognisable lohn
Cleese, Richard Briers’ sympathetic blind man. Ian Holm’s affection-
ate father and Robert Hardy’s reactionary lecturer all equally impres-
sive in their roles.
Not, perhaps, the epic work one might have hoped for - and cer-
tainly not the definitive Frankenstein promised by its title - Branagh's
film treads a similar artistic tightrope to Francis Ford Coppola's
equally-touted Bram Stoker’s Dracula\ high on style with plenty of
artistic licence exercised as regards content and accuracy.
38 HAMMER HORROR
TERROR VISION
H A M M i: R . ^21 ORIGINAL
^ Taste tke
. FEATURES SPECIAL COLLECTOR’S PACK
Taste the Blood of Dracuia
Warner Brothers/Terror Vision
Sell-through release 17th July
then witness Courtlcy's incantation within the confines of a deserted
church which ultimately results in Dracula's resurrection.
Director Peter Sasdy capably handles the various plot dynamics
as the reborn Count claims his revenge upon Messrs Hargood,
Seeker and Paxton after their killing of his disciple, Courtley, during
the evil ceremony. Dracula's mesmeric allure forces Mice Hatgood
(Linda Hayden), Lucy Paxton (Isla Blair) and leremy Seeker (Martin
larv'is) to murder their respective fathers; an apt vengeance upon the
stifling moralirt' - not to mention the rampant hypocrisy - of
Victorian society'.
Tosle Ihc BIockI of Dracuia may ha\'e been Sasdy’s first film, but it
is also his best, surpassing even the inherently per\'erse atmosphere
of his other Hammers (Counfess Drocu/o and Hands of the Ripper)
and resoundingly eclipsing the absolute nadir of his work, the lamen-
table loan Collins vehicle / Don't Want To Be Born. Sasdy appears to
take consummate pleasure in attacking the corruption rife in the
Victorian era, concentrating in the main on the sexual frustrations of
the time. This is never better amplified than in the scene where the
overbearing Hargewd chastises his daughter for displaying herself in
a provocative manner, and for being “a harlot in God’s house”. The
hypocrisy of his position (bearing in mind his own libidinous pur-
suits) is dire enough, but is added to by his lascivious behaviour
towards his daughter Alice. When he whips her for disobeying him. a
perv'crse air of incestuous desire percolates throughout the scene to
maximum effect.
This sexual subtext is similarly exploited in Dracula's own appear-
ances; his beckoning to both Alice and Lucy is met with near-
orgasmic delight, and both women arc transformed from slightly
starchy maidens into vivacious sirens. The alluring Hayden with her
flowing blonde hair, and the more mature but equally 'reconstructed'
Blair, effectively convey Dracula's appeal to women.
In addition to the requisite Gothic m/se-en-sce/te - silent grave-
yards, cobwebbed churches and lightning storms - Sasdy also
integrates a form of religious parody into the proceedings; Courtlcy’s
sombre resurrection of Dracuia is itself symbolic of Christ’s own
rcssurection as witnessed in churches throughout the land via the
regalia of the Holy Communion scr\'ice.
Taste the Blood of Dracuia also features one of the most exhilarat-
ing opening sequences ever as Weller, stranded in a darkened forest,
stumbles upon Dracuia in his death-throes, blood flowing fron his
erubescent eyes and now-limp torso, run through by a giant cross.
The only real quibble is the relative scarceness of Dracula’s
scenes, and how little he actually docs in them. Otherwise, this is an
excellent Hammer entr)'. Brickbats, however, to Warners for failing to
secure an uncut print of the film for this release.
A mazing as it seems, It wasn’t until this, Christopher Lee's fourth
outing for Hammer in the title role, that the arch-fiend was
finally restored to the precise Victorian mifieu as
described in Bram Stoker’s seminal book.
This seemingly minor detail actually plays a major
part in the film's success - and it’s one of the best of
the Dracuia series - for it provides a strict, moralistic
background against which the story unfolds, and
allows Dracula’s anti-Victorian values to fester and
contaminate all those who come into contact with
him.
Speaking of morals, there is a decided lack of
them encapsulated within the three corrupt society
'gentlemen’ - William Haigood (Geoffi'ey Keen),
Jonathan Seeker (John Careon) and Samuel Paxton
(Peter Sallis) - who, having deceived their families
into imagining that they carry out important charity
work in London's East End, ritually indulge their
hedonistic impulses inside a seedy bordello on the
final Sunday of each month.
Finding themselves bored by the pleasures of the
flesh, they encounter the mysterious Lord Courtley
(Ralph Bates) whose unhealthy interest in the Black
Arts intrigues them. After providing the financial
means for Courtley to secure the cloak and dried
powder blood of Count Dracuia from the mercenary
Weller (Roy Kinnear), the triumvirate of deviants
HAMMF.R nOKROR
To THE Devil ...a Daughter
Warner Brothers/Terror Vision
Sell-through release 17th luly
H ammer’s horror swansong, To the Devil ... a Daughter saw the
purveyors of Gothic horror crashing out with not so much a
bang as a whimper.
Unlike Terence Fisher’s masterful evocation of Dennis Wheatley-
style Satanism in The Devil Rides Out, Peter Sykes’s film eschews the
heightened psychological tension of his earlier Hammer thriller
Demons of the Mind, and fails to merge the disparate strands of
Wheatley’s text into a cogent landscape,
Christopher Lee plays Father Michael Raynor (in reality a demon-
worshipping occultist) with his customary elan. His adversary,
played by the monumentally miscast Richard Widmark, is John
Vemey, an American novelist with a particular penchant for the
Black Arts. The central figure caught up in their conflict is the allur-
ing Nastassja Kinski as Catherine, whom Raynor attempts to entice
into his Satanic rites; Vemey is cast in the role of her moral guardian
and saviour. ,
There are, undeniably, certain moments where the insidious pres-
ence of evil is artfully realised - the effective church scenes and the
assorted manifestations of occult forces - but these are spread too
thinly in a disjointed screenplay. The action merely ebbs and flows
from one potential crisis point to another.
Denholm Elliot and Honor Blackman as the tormented girl’s
parents turn in wholly convincing performances, but even these can’t
compensate for the film’s doomed attempts to outdo the likes of The
Exorcist and The Omen.
The Hammer success story was firmly rooted in their sense of
style, in the period trappings and Gothic atmospheres their films
evoked in spades. The company’s later efforts to update these attrib-
utes (in, for instance, Dracula AD 1972 and To the Devil ... a
Daughter) almost habitually ended in failure.
40 HAMMER HORROR
hr nil: l;A)i'j’irf; Coin;
Warner Brothers/Beyond Vision
Retail release 1 7th July
A nother horror/fantasy entry from the once-prolific Amicus stable,
/ \ At the Earth's Core, adapted from the Edgar Rice Burroughs
novel, follows a template established by The Land That Time Forgot.
substituting the latter’s Antarctic setting for the subterranean land of
Pellucidor.
The film is primarily of interest to Hammer fans for the appear-
ances of Peter Cushing and Caroline Munro. Versatile as ever,
Cushing here plays Dr Abner Perry, an eccentric Jules Veme-esque
inventor. Aided by David Innes (Doug McClure), he uses a giant
excavating machine to burrow into the very bowels of the Earth.
They find themselves in an underground hell dominated by warring
factions of the Sagoths and the Wing People.
As Princess Dia, Munro remains the obvious attraction: she’s
certainly more captivating than the none-too-special effects which
result in rubbery prehistoric monsters - and there are more strings
visible than in a performance by the London Philharmonic and a
Thu/tderb/rds episode put together!
That said, there is a certain eeriness to the baying pterodactyl
creatures, whose luminous eyes glow menacingly in anticipation of
their next kill.
Director Kevin Connor carved out a niche in this particular type of
sciencc-fiction/fantasy romp and certainly manages to keep the pace
rattling along at a more than satisfactory rate.
The numerous shots of the rotating drill excavating its way
through the Earth perhaps uniquely pre-date some of the environ-
mental concerns which haunt the planet today - ditto the notion of
Man’s destruction of his environment at the altar of monetary gain.
However, the picture predominantly conjures up the kind of enter-
taining, rollercoaster ride of a Saturday morning serial at the cinema;
Af the Earth's Core exhibits that same brand of innocent charm and
appeal. Enjoy it before you become too corrupted.
e*V2
Witch Hunt
Guild
Rental release - out now
A bly directed by Paul Schrader, W/tc/i Hunt is a fantasy-cum-noir
thriller set in 1950s Hollywood. The film successfully combines
the McCarthy-esque political paranoia of the period with the intrigu-
ing premise that the practice of magic and illusion is now common-
place to a point where it threatens 'normal' society.
Private detective Philip Lovecraft (Dennis Hopper) is hired by
actress Kim Hudson (Penelope Ann Miller) to investigate the appar-
ent infidelity of her producer/husband Gotleib. The unfortunate
Gotlieb, however, is found to have been magically shrunk and then
devoured by his two hungry Dobermans ("Somebody’s played
whammy with Gotleib to cut him down to size . . .”)
As Lovecraft tries to unravel these mystical shenanigans, he enlists
the help of an actual witch, Hypolita Kropotkin (Sheryl Lee Ralph),
in order to uncover the perpetrator of these black magic incidents.
Humourous incidents pep up their search - as in the sudden
appearance of a be-pantalooned William Shakespeare, summoned
up to sharpen up a flagging script - as well as liberal doses of trick-
ery and political intrigue. Pairs of scissors take flight and catapult
into Lovecraft as he visits a barber; the charaaers in a drive-in movie
miraculously come to life and start to shoot their audience.
Meanwhile, aspiring Senator Larson Crockett (Eric Bogosian) moots
a spurious
‘Unnatural
Activities Act’ in
a bid to oudaw
magicians every-
where. Having
thus roused the
agitated masses,
he then has
Hypolita tied at
a stake to be
burned as a
witch. "Magic is
in every one of
us. It's as
common as
salt,” she cries
defiantly - and
manages to
produce one
more trick from
up her sleeve,
casting a spell
on Crockett. His
invective is cur-
tailed on the
podium as he
stutters and spits
out a toad! As
the open-mouthed crowd looks on we then see the senator ‘reborn’
as an exact replica of himself bursts from his back (a la Demons),
now exhibiting a new-found punk philosophy and abusing the crowd
in addition.
The denouement implicates Crockett in Gotleib’s demise, plus the
eccentric figure of magician Finn Macha (Julian Sands) in much the
same way that Crockett is prepared to discredit the notion of magic
to satisfy his own political expediency. As such, the "sinister tenta-
cles of magic" pale into insignificance when set against the evil
deceit that politicians perpetuate against the masses; a simplistic but
nonetheless refreshing conclusion to an equally reft-eshing film,
where attention to detail extends so far as to use garishly-dated film
stock in order to convincingly recreate the 1950s style.
It has to be said that Hopper is criminally under-used in his role
as the Marlowe-esque detective, but there is enough diversity and
invention on show here to compensate for such relatively
minor quibbles.
TERROR VISION
HORROR
CLASSIC
Mil
1 /
V /
“WOLFEN’
\ /
SPECIAL COLLECTOR'S EOITION
With original trailer and collector’s pack
Warner Brothers/Terror Vision
Sell-through release 17th July
resented in widescreen with its original cinema trailer, Wolfen is a
welcome re-release, having been rather neglected by the horror
cognoscenti and cinema audiences in general; a great pity, as this
highly original movie is a minor gem.
Adapted from a Whitley Streiber novel, director Michael
Woodstock Wadleigh may not have been the most obvious of choices
for a contemporary horror film, swapping his earlier wallow in mud
for WoZ/en's wallow in urban decay.
The intriguing premise here surrounds the threat from a killer
pack of super-intelligent wolves that hunt in the modern-day squalor
of New York’s South Bronx ghetto. Albert Finney’s eccentric detective
is set on their trail, together with his female partner (Diane Verona)
and a coroner’s officer (Gregoiy' Hines).
Wadicigh’s overt use of a subjective steadicam and optical effects
in order to evoke a 'wolf’s-eye view’ is a clear attempt to provoke
some kind of empathy with the creatures - a theme perpetuated with
the audacious revelation that the wolves have their own high intelli-
gence, one which rivals humanity in terms of civilised existence and
intellectual development. .
Invigorating as this premise may be, it doesn't quite hold scientific
water. The film succeeds more readily in highlighting social injustice,
from the pcrverty-stricken inhabitants of the Bronx, to the poignant
intervention of an American Indian (Edward James Oimos). The
plight of his ostracised people is effectively contrasted against the
fate which befell the wolves.
If you’re searching for a more traditional lycanthropic thriller with
full moon transformations, abundant facial hair, ripped-out jugulars
and silver bullets then you’re better advised viewing the likes of An
American Werewolf in London or The Howling. If, however, you’re
prepared to forego such visceral delights in favour of something
rather more subtle and insinuating, you’ll find Wolfen a pleasant
diversion, albeit a flawed one; its enfeebled denouement
lacks the necessary bite. j
HAMMER HORROR 4
TERROR VISION
HORROR . — , CLASSIC
House OF Wax
Warner BraF/iers/Terror Vision
Sell-through release 17th July
T he first of two Vincent Price titles to be released this month is
House of Wax, Andre de Toth’s masterly 1953 remake of Charles
Belden’s earlier Mystery of the Wax Museum. Like the other Terror
Vision releases, it comes complete with a selection of three 'collec-
tor's cards' detailing cast, credits, and behind-the-scenes facts.
Although originally filmed in 3-D, the film’s undoubted pleasures
are mainly derived from its more
natural visuals, aesthetics, and
de Toth’s directorial flair. Vincent
Price stars as Professor Jarrod, a
brilliant wax sculptor who, after
becoming hideously disfigured in
a fire, turns to murder, and uses
the corpses of his victims as a
base around which to build his
wax figures.
Lashings of atmosphere are
generated from its turn of the
century Baltimore setting, all
fogbound streets and gaslit
moigues. Most memorable of all,
however, Is the menacing sil-
houette of Price, clad ominously
in black cloak and fedora, chas-
ing a terrified Sue Allen (Phyllis
Kirk) through the silent night-
time streets (a scene unnervingly
reprised during Mario Bava's
equally enthralling Baron Blood
some twenty years later).
Fans of film minutiae wiU also
be interested to know that direc-
tor de Toth only had sight in one
eye, making the film’s much-vaunted initial release in 3-D a definite
non-starter for him, whilst one of the film's minor players, Charles
Buchinsky, later changed his name to Charles Bronson,
House of Wax is certainly one of the finest films of its period and
well worthy of reissue. _
Theater of Biood
Warner Brothers/Terror Vision
Sell-through release 17th July
T his 1973 Price vehicle (issued in its US print), mined a rich seam
in the ubiqitous actor’s career, falling between the outre humour
and outrageous horror of The Abominable Dr Phibes and his equally
voracious appearance in the next year’s Amicus offering. Madhouse.
As Edward Lionheart, a Shakespearian actor who fakes his suicide
in order to murder the critics who first slighted him, Price is ideal,
hamming it up as only he can, and aided to the full l^y Diana Rigg’s
equally scheming Edwina.
With 'Death’s labours found’, Lionheart proceeds, with great
relish, to perpetrate a whole series of Bard-inspired demises upon
the members of the Critics Circle he has set in his sights; they denied
him a Best Actor award, he is determined to deny them their lives.
To this end he claims his pound of flesh from Trevor Dickman (Harry
Andrews), forces Solomon Psaltery Qack Hawkins) to kill his own
wife, saws the head off Horace Sprout (Arthur Lowe) ... The
absolute icing on the cake, however, has got to be the cringe-induc-
ing scene where Meredith Merridew (Robert Morley) - an enormous
dog lover - is force-fed his own beloved poodles in a pie, hairs and
all!
In the capable hands of director Douglas Hickox, the grotesque
vignettes which comprise this Gothic melodrama are ushered in at a
kinetic pace,
although at times
the hcav)' irony is
vaguely grating - ail
the more so. con-
sidering the occa-
sional moments of
real tension Hickox
manages to wring
from the script.
Given the Bard’s
ovenvhelming influ-
ence on events,
Theater of Blood is
an entirely appro-
priate title - but
one can’t help wish-
ing that its alterna-
tive could have
been used, namely
Much Ado About
Murder . . .
7
Redemption
Sell-through release - out now
companion-piece to director Antonio Bido's B/otxfsfa/ncd Shtidoiv
(reviewed last month). The Cot’s Vict/ms (aka Wolch Me When /
Kill) once again plagarises Dario Argento's superior Deep Red for all
its worth, rendering this yet another competent but uninspired Bido
picture.
Paolo Tendcsco is Mara, a young dancer who witnesses a murder
and herself becomes a potential victim. Aided by her boyfriend Luca
(Con-ado Pani), Mara
attempts to track down the
killer to ensure her sur-
vival.
As with many films of
this ilk. convoluted plot-
ting, eccentric characters,
and thunderous rock
music prevail. Add to this
heady brew a sub-plot
concerning Nazi collabora-
tors, and a whole gamut of
grotesque murders - that
of Esmcrelda (Yill Pratt)
being especially effective.
Another bravura scene has
Bozzi (Fernando Ccrolli)
strangled in his bath to the
accompaniment of rousing
classical music, which pro-
vides the only moment of
orchestrated violence
during the entire film,
Bido manages to cover
all of the intended bases once again, even if he doesn’t quite manage
to hit all the intended targets. He’s also guilty' here of using the famil-
iar budget-saving device of including too much lengthy exposition at
the expense of any meaningful exchanges and, for that matter,
action.
If you're a g/o/lo film completist, then The Cal's Victims will be
required viewing. If not, and you haven’t yet seen it, then I suggest
borrowing, blagging - or even buying - the inspiration behind this
and many in its particular sub-genre: Deep Red.
6 'A
FEATURES SPECIAL COLLECTOR'S PACK
42 HAMMER HORROR
Kuroneko
Tartan Video
Sell-through release - out now
A nother feline horror title, this time a ghost story adapted from a
lapanese folktale, The Cat's Revenge.
Kuronefeo is the work of Kaneto Shindo, one of the pioneers of the
so-called Golden Age of lapanese cinema in the first half of the
century. Shindo also directed the superior Oriental chiller Onibaba,
and here employs a similarly vibrant drum-oriented soundtrack, but,
unfortunately, fails to reach the dizzying heights of his earlier work.
The film revolves
around the mother and
the wife of a samurai,
Gintoki, who has
departed to fight in
imperialist wars. The
two women arc raped
and arbitrarily slain by
a group of marauding
samurai; their hut is
then razed to the
ground. A solitary black
cat laps up the women's
blood and proceeds to
transform them into
vampiric shape-shifters
who inveigle unwary
travellers into the near-
by bamboo forests and
kill them.
Upon his return,
Gintoki (Kichiemon
Nakamura) is charged
■ with ridding the locality
of these ethereal killers
- a mission he is,
initially, only too willing to accept - but his fearlessness soon
evaporates once the true identity of his prey becomes clear.
Despite some atmospheric scenes in its eerie forest setting, and
the supernatural exploits of the two enchanting killers. Kuroneko
lacks the tense ambience of Onibaba. Shindo's concealed political
agenda rises to the fore, perhaps at the expense of his considerable
artistry. Thus the allegorical strain of the film - the brutality effected
by one social class {the samurai) against a lower order (the poverty-
stricken women) - transcends the finer moments of visual poetry.
However. Gintoki's agonising dilemma - should he kill those he
loves for the good of society, or should he spare them and risk per-
sonal humiliation? - does provide some narrative drive to Shindo’s
unique and intensely personal vision of Japanese society.
Kantto Siilitdo’s
Kuroneko
Lifespan
Art/iouse
Sell-through release - out now
f^U'ow can you be satisfied with something that has to end?”
llqueries Lifespan’s Dr Ben Land (Hiram Keller), an expert in
the effects of the human ageing process and seeker of an elusive
elixir of eternal youth.
Land discovers, to his horror, that another specialist in the field,
Paul Linden, has committed suicide by hanging himself from a beam
in his Amsterdam apartment. Land duly falls for the none-too-subtle
charms of Linden’s ex-girlfriend Anna (Tina Aumont) - a sexually
precocious creature with a bondage fetish. The doctor then makes a
major breakthrough by discovering how radiation affects the ageing
process, and enters into the covert world of Nicolas Ulrich (Klaus
Kinski), a millionaire industrialist who also seeks to slow down or
stop the biological clock. As the head of a Swiss pharmaceutical fac-
tory, Kinski (in a cameo role, despite his
star billing) cuts a rather Faustian figure,
prepared to offer anything in return for
eternal youth.
Director Alexander Whitelaw was
once an assistant to the legendary' David
0 Sciznick during the 1950s. but this
debut fails to explore some of the script's
more intriguing ideas: namely the ideals
of progressive liberal science versus
those embodied in Ulrich’s mercenary
fascism.
Altogether too static - Land’s intrusive
Chandler-esque narration serving only to
disjoint the proceedings - and failing to
match on screen the fascinating ideas
which inform its premise. Lifespan is so
sedate that at times it really does seem
as if a lifetime has passed watching it.
6
Warner Brotbers/Tcrror Vision
Sell-through release 1 7th July
rankenstein Unbound was legendary
director Roger Gorman’s first feature in
20 years, and marked a change of pace
from his rightly-famed 1960s F.dgar Allan
Poe adaptations. What we have here is a
thought-provoking film of Brian Aldiss's
novel which mixes the Frankenstein story
with some liberal doses of science-fiction.
“Here 1 am either at the end of a world
or at the beginning of one," says scientist
Joseph Buchanan (John Hurt), whose
experiments to develop a new weapon
instead cause the opening of a time portal
into which both he and his futuristic com-
puter-controlled car are sucked. He lands
up in nineteenth-century Switzerland, in
the company of such luminaries as Shelley
(Michael Hutchence), wife Mary (Bridget
Fonda), Byron (Jason Patric). and a certain
Victor Frankenstein (Raul Julia).
With great perception. Buchanan
deduces that he will soon be making the acquaintance of a certain
monster, and, sure enough, he is shortly found being shaken warmly
by the throat by Victor’s Creature (Nick Brimble).
Artistic licence gives way momentarily to a more traditional plot-
line as the Creature pleads with Victor to supply him with a mate.
The creator’s refusal unleashes the Creature's full fur^', and it wreaks
its revenge upon Victor’s bride-to-be Elizabeth (Catherine Rabett),
whose demise proves to be brief indeed.
The rather surreal conclusion contains some stunning, rainbow-
hued pyrotechnics. Buchanan and the Creature confront one another
in an underground laboratory; Buchanan will later cmctge to discov-
er a futuristic sight yawning before him which grants an added
poignancy to his opening remarks.
Although the elegance and atmosphere of the Pm films is rarely
present here. Corman still manages to invest the picture with his
customary ingenuity. From the incongruity of the gleaming silver car
set amidst lush countr\'side to its optimistic conclusion, an air of
versimilitude pervades the film, thanks to some excellent sets, matte
paintings, and special effects. Certainly, Frankenstein Unbound adds
some new concepts to a much-covered mythos, and shows a willing-
ness to experiment that is not always so prevalent in many of the
other versions of the tale.
7
IIAMMnii IIOKKOK 43
TERROR VISION
HORROR CLASSIC
The Wicker Man
Warner Brothers/Terror Vision
Sell-through release 17th July
subtlety in evoking it, which separates The Wicker Man's wheat from
the chaff of more formulaic, exploitative thriller fare. Howie’s soul
visibly cmmbles as he takes a moonlit walk to the accompaniment of
the frequent ecstatic cries of copulating couples in the nearby fields,
and as he witnesses children dancing around a phallic maypole.
(“The image of the penis which is venerated in religions such as ours
as symbolising the generative force in nature," expounds Miss Rose,
conveniently.) As if these 'sacrileges’ weren’t enough, Howie also
discovers a mother openly breast-feeding in the island's graveyard,
and finds Rowan’s grave to be no such thing, but navel skin wound
around a branch. The local shops contain such delicacies as bottled
hearts, snake oil and foreskins, and, outside the opulent estate of
Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee), naked maidens dance through
fire in an ancient fertility' rite.
Whilst Howie is left to worship his invisible, spiritualistic God, the
islanders place their faith in the fertility of something tangible: the
soil from which they reap their har\'est, and, by inference, their
spiritual needs. As tropical flowers and a myriad of colourful flowers
blossom in abundance, their faith appears well justified,
Howie’s stru^le doesn’t automatically lead us to empathise with
the beleaguered policeman. He is entrenched in religious dogma and
remains utterly humourless throughout; a tragic, unemotional
automaton by comparison to the exuberant locals, whose vivacity is
perfectly encapsulated within the voluptuous figure of Willow (Britt
Ekiand). That her sensuous lullaby, beaten out on Howie’s adjoining
bedroom wall, is met with only a muted response tells us more about
Howie’s emotional and physical frigidity than her licentiousness.
As the omnipotent 'Lord of the Dance’, Lee gives one of the best
performances in his illustrious career, surpassing much of his classic
Hammer work. The Hammer presence is reinforced by Ingrid Pitt as
the local librarian.
An entirely valedictory conclusion, featuring the striking Wicker
Man structure ablaze atop an emerald green hill, is expertly inter-
woven into the enthralling climax: its flaming nucleus an irreverent
parody of Christ’s death and resurrection/rebirth, standing silently,
mocking as if some ancient promordial monolith.
Not only does The Wiefcer Afon leave such risible har\'cst-timc
epics as Scarecrows. The Secret of Harvest Home and Children of the
Corn for dead, but its crisp photography, convincing realisation, and
elaborate invention place it at the very peak of the horror genre. In
fact, there is no earthly reason why this shouldn’t merit a glorious
full set of marks, but for Warner Brothers' infuriating release of the
truncated 85 minute print rather than the most complete 102 minute
version.
44
was the best part I've ever had as far as the script was con-
Icemed, It was a brilliant script, with wonderful lines, What
more can an actor ask for?" A
glowing panegyric from the dis-
cerning lips of one Christopher
Lee, The subject? Robin Hardy’s
debut genre film, The Wicker
Man . . .
An insular Scots island com-
munity proves to be wholly
inhospitable to mainland police
sergeant Howie (Edward
Woodward), who has arrived
there in response to an anony-
mous request to search the
island for a missing 12 year-old
girl, Rowan.
Howie's own deeply devout
Christian nature at once places
him in diametrical opposition to
local Pagan beliefs. “You never
learn anything of Christianity?"
Howie enquires of the island’s
schoolteacher. Miss Rose (Diane
Cilento). “Only as a comparative
religion," she counters. It is this
central conflict, and Hardy’s
I TEI?OR VISION
H O R K (> R CLASSIC
T hanks to Warner Home Video, we have six sets of videos from
their new Terror Vision range to be won. Each set comprises
Taste the Blood of Draeula. To the Devil ... a Daughter, The
Wieker Man. Theater of Blood. House of Wax, and At the Earth’s Core.
The tapes go on sale on 17th July, priced £10.99 each (£9.99 for At the
Earth’s Core).
Terror Vision specialises in the best of horror films and is divided into three
categories:
Horror Classics include outstanding films from the genre (House of Wax. Wotfen,
The Wicker Man), each presented with a selection of three collectors’ cards
detailing cast and credit details and behind-the-scenes facts about the film and stars.
Hammer Classics include such memorable movies as Taste the Blood of Draeula and
To the Devil ... a Daughter.
The Crypt Collection includes such films as The Hitcher, Friday the 13th,
Frankenstein Unbound and It.
To be in with a chance of winning a set of tapes, simply tell us the answers to the
following questions:
a) Other than Peter Cushing, which Draeula AD 1972 star also features in At the
Earth’s Core? ‘
b) How many of Dennis Wheatley's novels were filmed by
Hammer?
Send your entries on the back
of a postcard or a sealed-down
enwiope to:
Terror Vision Competition. Hammer Horror,
Marvel Comics Ltd.. Arundel House.
13/15 Arundel Street. London, VVC2R 3DX
Competition rules:
1. \'o multiple entries will k oceepteil. 2 . \o employees of Mtirwl Comics LtiL, their fnmilies. or employees of the competitions sponsoring
contptiny m;iy enter. .V The eilitor's decision is final. \o correspondence shall be entered into. 4. All competition entr.ints must be tiged 18 or over.
5. Competition entries must arrive by secoiul pc'sl on 29ih August 1995,
TERROR VISION
II A SI s
r,R ^ OKliilHAL
To tlie Devil
aDauditer
c) Upon which Scottish
island is The Wicker Man
set?
caste
:lie
Blood
of
Draeula
14 h
- Tt '
“Made wit/i care, and at Bray m take every care, these pictures are a
genuine cinema form. I like to think that a picture like Dracula wJ/i
be shown at the National Film Theatre In twenty or thirty years time
■ ■ ■ I object to my films being called 'horror' pictures. It's become
such a deregotary word. It suggests the sensationally worst side of
the cinema. I prefer my work to be known as macabre’.”
- Terence Fisher. I960
Terence Fisher used Ifte dwindled budget of Frankenstein
and Uie Monster From Hell to claustrophobically inventive effect.
The Gothic horror saw tfte director's career out on a high note.
T he final Instalment of Keith Dudley’s
behind-the-scenes features concentrates
on Terence Fisher - the master of
Hammer's house of horror.
46 HAMMER HORROR
STARTING JULY 9th
AN EXCLUSIVE-ROBERT L.
CO-PRODUCTION
LIPPERT
GEOliei:
MARGUl-RFre
Is
clapper-boy. He soon decided, however, that his ambitions lay in film
editing, and talked his way into the cutting-rooms where he worked as
an assistant editor on Victor Saville’s romantic period drama Evensong.
Director/producer Robert Stevenson took Fisher on to edit his 1936
Gainsborough Studios picture, T^dor
Rose, and Fisher would spend the
next ten years as a supervising editor:
he worked on some twenty pictures in
this time, including Gainsborough’s
notorious 1945 hlghwaywoman
melodrama, The Wicfeed Lady. T\vo
years later, Fisher joined the Rank
Organisation’s training school at
Highbury Studios; Rank soon recognised his directorial potential, and
set him to work on three low-budget second features - To the Public
Danger, A Song for Tomorrow, and Colonel Bogey.
Armed with the knowledge he had gained at the Rank school, Fisher
returned to Gainsborough where he directed three furthersmall-scaie
productions (Portrait From Life,
Marry Me, and The Astonished
Heart) before making his
breakthrough with 1950's So
Long at the Fair, upon which
he shared the director’s credit
with Anthony Darnborough.
Starring Jean Simmons, Dirk
Bogarde and Andre Morell,
So Long at the Fair, set amid
the Paris Exposition of 1889, told the tale of a sudden and inexplicable
disappearance in the manner of The Lady Vartishes. It brought him to the
attention of Hammer Films’ Anthony Hinds and, after directing one more
Gainsborough picture in 1951 (Home to Danger), he took up Hinds’s
offer to join the Bray Studios team. The first of his 29 eventual features
for the company was 1952’s The Last Page, a straightforward ‘B’ thriller
starring George Brent and Diana Dors.
The first of Fisher’s
29 eventuai features
for Hammer was
1952’s 77re Last Rags,
a straightforward
thrilier starring
George Brent
and Diana Dors.
T erence Fisher, often regarded as the father of the British horror film,
was born in London’s Maida Vale on 23rd February 1904. After
leaving school, he joined the Merchant Navy and spent three years
at sea, eventually becoming a second mate. The life was not for him.
and he came ashore. In 1933. he was working for the John Lewis
organisation when he heard of a training scheme being run by Michael
Balcon at Ealing Studios, and managed to gain a place on it as a
HAMMER HORROR 47
fisher fat the
Oottom of the
picture) directs
Zachary Scott and
Kay Kendall in the
cramped confines
of Bray Studios
ft)r 1953 'swings
of Danger.
Wings of Danger followed shortly after, alongside the studio’s first
science-fiction/horror subject - plastic surgery melodrama Stolen face.
Fisher helmed two more quota thrillers {Mantrap and Blood Orange),
plus the science-fiction murder mystery Spaceways and the ingenious
fantasy four-S/ded Triangle, of which Fisher was fond. “I admit to having
a certain weakness for that film,” he said in 1964. “It really is my only
SF film that 1 don’t dislike . . .
The idea of a perfect double
was very exciting, and a lot
more interesting than those
silly bug-eyed monsters."
The assignments kept on
coming; Face the Music, The
Stranger Came Home, Murder
by Proxy, Mask of Dust . . .
Although Fisher’s principal
commitment was to Hammer,
he’d work for other indepen-
dent studios in 1954 (on Finol
Appointment and Children
Galore). Fisher also worked in
television around this time:
on the Boris Karloff vehicle
Colonel March of Scotland
Yard: on Bray-produced series
The Douglas Fairbanks
Theatre: on The Sword of
freedom; and on the Richard
Greene series, The Adventures
of Robin Hood.
Under the terms of their contract, Hammer owed Fisher a film
towards the end of 1956; the next film scheduled happened to be a
full-colour remake of Frankenstein. “I thought it was ridiculous, and
could never see it making a picture. I still had my doubts when filming
started. But halfway through I realised we really had something,” said
Fisher four years later. The Curse of Frankenstein was a runaway
success, exceeding all of Hammer’s hopes both in Britain and overseas,
creating International stars in Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, and
establishing Hammer Films as a force to be reckoned with.
The key players behind the making of The Curse of Frankenstein were
reunited for Dracula, an atmospheric and powerful adaptation of the
Bram Stoker novel. Again, the film would prove to be an outstanding
performer at the box-office.
Once the subject of a John
Player Lecture at the
National Film Theatre, a
screening can still pack a
cinema auditorium even
now, some thirty-seven years
after its initial release.
"Dracula is a satisfying
film," said Fisher in 1975.
“It has survived, it’s still
running here and there . . .
1 love it because everything
was right about it. Very
nearly a love story, but not
quite."
In Gothic horror.
Hammer - and Fisher - had
found their niche, and
American distributors were
eager to avail themselves of
the rights to the company’s
product. The Revenge of
Frankenstein was next;
whereas the earlier Universal cycle had concentated upon the further
exploits of the Creature, Hammer’s sequels would follow its creator. In
1959, the company embarked upon the first in an anticipated sequence
of Sherlock Holmes adaptations. The Hound of the Baskerv/lles. Oriented
more to adventure than horror, Fisher’s reworking of Conan Doyle’s great
detective was not the success that Hammer had hoped for, and plans for
PETER GUSHING ..
1
...
MICHAEL 60UQH
MELISSA STRiBUNG
CHRISTOPHER LEE
Tecmcoiofi
fisher’s classic Gothic horrors launched Hammer onto the internationai stage.
4bow; The Spanish poster for Dracula and, opposite, the Belgian poster for Frarkerstein Created Woman.
48 HAMMER HORROR
y A
a series were shelved. Fisher
next tackled The Mummy.
another Universal Studios
staple, with Lee in the Karloff
role. 1959 would also see the
release of The Man Who Could
Cheat Death. Fisher's slow-
moving version of the play
The Man in Half Moon Street.
In direct contrast was his next
project. The Stranglers of
Bombay, a violent feature
concerning the Thugee, an
Indian religious cult of 1826.
Shot in stark black-and-white,
some of its scenes of ritualistic
murder fell foul of the censors.
As with The Hound of the
fiashervi/fes, it opened well at
the London box-office, but
takings fell off once it reached
the provinces, and has been only
rarely seen since. (Had it been
a success, Fisher had plans to
direct The Black Hole of
Calcutta, a semi-sequel once
again set during the British
occupation of India.)
The Two Faces of Dr Jekyll -
"An exercise, rightly or wrongly,
badly done or well done, in evil.
You didn't have a single charac-
ter in that story who was worth twopence ha'penny," according to Fisher
- came in 1960, as did The Sword of Sherwood Forest. Hammer’s second
excursion into the Robin Hood mythos proved Fisher’s talent for
action-adventure. The Brides of Dracula was another well-deserved hit
for Fisher’s team; The Curse of the Werewolf, however, only managed
around one-tenth of the receipts for the Frankenstein and Dracula
pictures. Although very well received by the critics overseas, The Curse
of the Werewolf was comprehensively damned in the UK.
In 1962, Fisher directed just one feature for Hammer -
The Phantom of the Opera, a surprisingly low-key version of
the Gaston Leroux novel. "The new Phantom is about as
dangerous as dear old grandad dressed up for Hallowe'en,"
sneered Time magazine. Fisher would later concede that the
film had its weaknesses; "The phantom wasn’t sufficiently
motivated for his deeds. He remains somewhat vague to us.
How, for instance, can he love a girl he doesn’t know and
has hardly ever seen at all?”
Free to take on other assignments, Fisher took off to
West Germany where he handled another Sherlock Holmes
picture, this time featuring Christopher Lee in the lead.
Sherfocfe Hofmcs and the Deadly Necklace, an international
co-production loosely based on The Valley of Fear, was beset
by dubbing problems and would be part-directed by Frank
Wltherstein. "It’s a film well worth left alone," commented
Fisher. The Horror Of It All. a bizarre horror-cum-musical
starring Pat Boone, would be Fisher’s next project; like the
Holmes picture, it has lapsed into obscurity since its release.
"For me it was really
a sort of experiment,”
remarked the director.
“I'm not sure whether
or not I did a good
job with it."
1964 saw Fisher
return to the Hammer
fold. The Gorgon
("A frustrated love
story," said Fisher) was a masterful Gothic thriller; dark,
moody and full of menace. It suffered, however, from
poorly-realised snake effects and on-set revisions to John
Gilling’s script, a source of some friction at the time. Shortly
after, Christopher Lee bowed to pressure from Hammer and
enabled the Count's reinvigoratlon in Dracula Prince of
Darhness. Fisher took up the reins for this sequel, which
^'Dracula is a
satisfying film,"
said Fisher in
1975. love it
because everything
was right about it.
Very nearly a love
story, but not
quite.**
included a controversial resurrection sequence. An interviewer once
said to him, “With the character of Klove hanging Charles Tingwell’s
head down over the tomb of Dracula, arms outstretched in the form
of an inverted crucifix, I saw it as a pastiche on the crucifixion of
Christ . . . Was it this that you had in mind when you shot that scene?"
"No," replied Fisher, "It just looked good!" (In fact, it had been precisely
the director’s intent to present the scene as “an anti-Christ ceremony.”)
An imprompiv
scnpt conference
ir/th Heather Sears
during shooting of
Tlie Phantom of the
Opera in 1962.
HAMMER HORROR 49
Fisher shot at Berkshire's Bray Studios for the last time irt 1966.
The film, Frankenstein Created Woman, was a further instalment in
Hammer's ongoing saga of the Baron. Between 1964 and 1967, Fisher
would also helm pictures for Planet Films, another independent
company in the sci-fi/horror field. The first of these, 1964's The Earth
Dies Screcming, was a slow-moving alien invasion thriller starring
Willard Parker and Virginia Field. Planet relied upon Fisher's reputation
to give their productions an edge and an audience,
but even with the added attraction of Peter Cushing
in Island of Terror, and both Cushing and Christopher
Lee in N/gfit of the Big Heat, they did nothing to
enhance Fisher's career.
For 1968's Dennis Wheatley adaptation The Devil
Rides Out, Hammer afforded Fisher the opportunity
to cast Mocata, the villain of the piece, a rare chance for the director.
"Charles Gray was perfect," enthused Fisher. "He had all the charm and
wickedness of evil.” Wheatley himself was well pleased with the finished
picture, and sent Fisher a telegram which read: “Saw film yesterday.
Heartiest congratulations, grateful thanks for splendid direction." Fisher
was to have handled a whole series
based on Wheatley's novels,
but slow returns from the
American box-office
scotched the notion.
With production complete on The Devil
Rides Out, Fisher was set to move directly
on to Dracufa Has JJ/scn from the Grave,
the third sequel to Dracula. But, attempt-
ing to cross a busy road late one night, he
was knocked down and broke his leg. His
place was taken by Freddie Francis. Upon
his recovery, Fisher shot Frankenstein
Must Be Destroyed. With a literate and
moving script by assistant director Bert
Batt from a story by producer Anthony
Nelson Keys, Fisher created an extremely
fast-moving and exciting entry in the
series. One of the two films of which he
claimed to be most proud (the other being
Drocufa), Fisher later commented: "That
was probably the first time within the
Frankenstein series that you had a really
emotional, character approach to brain
transplants ... 1 loved that subject, which
1 think was a most difficult one to portray,
and I thought about that film more than
any other I’ve done . . .”
Hammer signed Fisher to handle Lust
Fora Vampire, their 1972 sequel to the
successful The Vampire Lovers, but
immediately prior to production the
unfortunate director had yet another
run-in with a moving vehicle and suffered
yet another broken leg. Jimmy Sangster stood in for him.
By 1972. it was becoming increasingly difficult for Hammer to find
American distribution and finance. The company devised Frankenstein
and the Monster From Hell with a pared-down budget of around
£200,000 in mind. Producer Roy Skeggs hired Fisher as director and
persuaded Peter Cushing to return as the Baron. Scott MacGregor's sets,
built at Elstree Studios by Arthur Banks, combined with Brian Probyn’s
photography to create a horrifically claustrophobic
effect. Sadly, like many of Hammer's efforts at the
time, the film was not successful, but it did prove
that Hammer, and Terence Fisher, could still
deliver a well-crafted Gothic horror. The film
serves as a fitting climax to the Hammer series
and to Fisher’s career.
Terence Fisher died of cancer in June 1980. He was 76 years old.
Producer Anthony Hinds, fellow director Francis Searle, agent John
Redway, and actor Thorley Walters joined Fisher's widow, Morag, for
the funeral. At the time of his death, he was working on yet another
adaptation of Dracula for a small independent British film company,
and had been approached by Roy Skeggs to direct Peter Cushing and
Brian Cox in The Silent Scream, an episode of the Hummer House of
Horror television series. He had directed over fifty features during some
forty-seven years in the industry, and ensured his lasting reputation as
Hammer's most celebrated director. -f*
'^Charles Gray was
perfect,*’ enthused
Fisher. '*He had all
the charm and
wickedness of evil.”
mmmm
JTMIUNC
HOWARD DUFF
EVA BARTOK
Offtribution EXCLUSIVE fILMS Z\‘.
UATERMASS
PERIMENT
BRIAN DONLEVir JACK WARNER
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS WITH
ixamAmTMisH TmiL[it-pjiRm-mim/\
Kneale Guest ' Carreras
^ PLUS%VRT ONE OF
THE COlMPlETE HAMMER
^mMOGRAPHY
TERROR VISION
HAMMER
ORIGINAL
AVAILABLE TO BUY
17th JULY 1995
'racuia
FEATURES SPECIAL COLLECTOR'S PACK
FEATURES SPECIAL COLLECTOR’S PACK
TO THE DEVIL -A DAUGHTER
RRP £ 10.99 S038175
TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA
RRP £ 10.99 S011072
hr nammer
a trio of cc
ON SALE 14TH AUGUST 1995
THE SATANIC RITES OF DMCULA
DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRA\^E
^ Regislered Tradeniark of Warner Bros. «1 Rights Reserued.
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